An Analysis of UK MARC exchange tape variable data field subfield lengths, 1950–1980

Abstract

The Library of the International Airport Projects of the Ministry of Defence and Aviation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has installed an interactive online system using MARC tapes from which records are selected and transposed into a local format using compression techniques on the ADABAS DBMS. The investigation reported here was to determine sub‐field record lengths. It was considered necessary to undertake this despite data provided by BLAISE based on a sample of 22569 records, since Tags often covered a number of data elements. By analysing tapes covering the years 1950–1980, it was possible to determine the maximum length of any field, frequency of occurrence, and so on. The total number of records was 633,930. The results are described and sample sets of data included.

Citation

McMurdo, G. (1982), "An Analysis of UK MARC exchange tape variable data field subfield lengths, 1950–1980", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb046836