On August 16, OCLC announced the planned removal of "Electronic books" from 655 fields in bibliographic records. That term has never been a legitimate genre/form heading in either LCSH or LCGFT, as explained in the August message, which follows. The overwhelming response to this announcement was positive. We received several suggestions for removing other similar headings from records and decided to expand the project. We have begun work to remove the following headings (both singular and plural forms, hence the notation for dictionary/ies and directory/ies in the list below) from bibliographic records in WorldCat:
Electronic article
Electronic audio book
Electronic audiobook
Electronic book
Electronic dictionar…
Electronic director…
Electronic dissertation
Electronic document
Electronic encyclopedia
Electronic government information
Electronic government publication
Electronic handbook
Electronic journal
Electronic manuscript
Electronic map
Electronic masters project
Electronic newsletter
Electronic newspaper
Electronic publication
Electronic score
Electronic serial
Electronic student paper
Electronic text
Electronic theses
Electronic thesis
Other headings beyond those starting with "Electronic" have been suggested for removal. OCLC staff will be compiling and considering additions to this list for a future project that will commence once the headings above are eliminated. If you have additional headings to suggest for removal as being redundant to coding and other fields in MARC records, please send them to askqc@oclc.org. We will consider them carefully and make an announcement of an additional list of terms for elimination before taking action on a new list.
Please excuse duplication of this message.
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Cynthia M. Whitacre (she/her)
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OCLC · Senior Metadata Operations Manager, Membership & Research Division
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6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, Ohio, 43017 United States
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T +1-800-848-5878, ext. 6183
Direct: +1-614-764-6183
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Original message for reference:
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Subject: Removal of field 655 "Electronic books" in WorldCat records
The term "Electronic books" has never been valid for use in either LCSH or LCGFT as a genre/form heading (field 655). Although many institutions have long used it in WorldCat bibliographic records, it is a restatement of the type of carrier of a resource rather than an indication of the form or genre of the content. The usage of this term in field 655 may have been useful in the early days of eBooks, but with implementation of RDA, the MARC 21 format now has many metadata elements that provide information to determine if a resource is an electronic book:
- Form fixed field coded for electronic resource
- 006 Additional material characteristics for the computer file aspects of the resource
- 007 for electronic resource
- Field 300
- 33x Fields
Information about coding electronic resources in MARC can be found in Bibliographic Formats and Standards 3.3.1 Electronic Resources: https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/specialcataloging.html#electronicresources.
OCLC has consulted with members of the ALA Core Subject Analysis Committee regarding the term "Electronic books"; their advice was to remove this term from WorldCat bibliographic records, since it is redundant and just adds clutter to the records.
OCLC will be removing "Electronic books" in field 655 from WorldCat records when the term is coded as coming from LCSH, LCGFT, from an unspecific controlled vocabulary, or local controlled vocabulary. The following are the four scenarios where the term will be removed:
- 655 _ 0 Electronic books
- 655 _7 Electronic books $2 lcgft
- 655 _ 4 Electronic books
- 655 _7 Electronic books $2 local
If your organization would still like to have "Electronic books" in field 655 there are other options that can be used, such as Local Bibliographic Data (LBD) for those institutions that use the WorldShare Management System (WMS). For information on LBDs, please see 3.4.1 Copy- or Institution-Specific Information: https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/specialcataloging.html#copyorinstitutionspecificinformation. For institutions that have other integrated library platforms you can export the record with a 655 second indicator 4 or second indicator 7 and subfield 2 "local" when the term is in a local control vocabulary list. Please do not leave this field on WorldCat records as it will be deleted.
The project to remove these headings from WorldCat records will commence in September 2022.
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Jay Weitz
Senior Consulting Database Specialist
Online Computer Library Center
He/Him/His
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