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KORMARC
a
Oh Dong-Geun MLIS, Dr. Litt. professor
a
Department of Library and Information Science, Kei-Myung
University, Daegu 704-701, Korea.
Published online: 02 Dec 2013.
To cite this article: Oh Dong-Geun MLIS, Dr. Litt. professor (1992) KORMARC, The
International Information & Library Review, 24:4, 341-352
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. B Libr. Rev. (1992) 24, 341-352
OH DONG-GEUN*
ABSTRACT
‘This article investigates the characteristics of KORMARC
(Korean Machine Readable MARC) format and the role
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* Oh Dong-Geun, MLIS, Dr. Litt., is a professor at the Department ofLibrary and Information
Science, Kei-Myung University, Daegu 704-701, Korea.
Formal Structure
The general structure of KORMARC is the same as that of ISO,
consisting of five parts, namely leader, directory, control fields, variable
fields and record terminator (RT). The structure is shown in Table I.
TABLE I
General Structure of KORMARC
TABLE II
KORMARC Leader
Offset Usage
TABLE III
KOXMAKC Directory Entry Structure
* KORMARC now uses me byte “/* sign as FT for the time being.
XORx.RRC
‘Y RBLE w
Control Field Structure
Data FT
Content Designators
Content designators are codes identifying data elements and/or pro-
viding additional information about a data element.’ As manifested
from the above, KORMARC uses three kinds of content designators,
namely tag, indicator and identifier.
The tag consists of three-character numeric codes. It is contained in
the first portion of the directory entry. As in USMARC, according to
the first character of the tag, control and variable data fields are grouped
into blocks, usually by the function of the data, as follows:
oxx Control information, identification and classification
informations, etc.
IXX Main entries
2xx Titles and Title paragraph
3xx Physical description, etc.
4xx Series statements
5xx Notes
6XX Subject access fields
7xx Added entries other than subject or series; linking fields
8XX Series added entries
9xX Reserved for local implication
and within the blocks related to access point, the following meanings
TABLE V
Variable Field Structure
t KORMARC now uses cme byte $ sign as a subfield delimiter for the time being.
$ KORMARC now uses one byte & sign as RT for the time being.
346 OH DONG-GEUN
Content of Record
The content is the data elements recorded in the fields and subfields.
In this section, characteristic data elements in KORMARC are con-
sidered in two parts, those of fixed fields and those of variable fields.
Coded Data Elements. As discussed earlier, data elements in the leader
are fixed-length, coded data, but the typical elements in data fields are
those of Fixed-Length Data Elements Field (008). This field contains
40 character positions (00-39) that provide coded data elements poten-
tially useFu1 for retrieval and data management purposes. These data
elements are shown in Table VI.
As in other formats, the data elements are potentially defined.
Character positions not defined also contain blank.
Intellectual Level (22) specifies doctoral dissertation, thesis, old book,
as well as juvenile work, textbook and reference work. Korean Uni-
versity Publication (26-27) and Korean Government Publication (38-
39) specifies the university or college, and national or local government
agency in Korea, respectively, according to the code lists for them. This
code can be useful for the retrieval of work published by any university
or government agency in Korea. Form of Literature (33) specifies a
characteristic literary form of Korea such as old Korean folksongs, sijo,
as well as fiction, non-fiction, drama, etc.
A Modified Record Code, common to other formats, is not provided
in KORMARC, in this field. The information on the modification is
entered in Field 949.
TABLE VI
Data Elements of Field 008
23 Form of item I
24-25 Nature of contents 2
26-27 Korean university publication* 2
28 Modified record 1
29 Conference publication 1
30 Festschrift 1
31 Index 1
32 Cataloging source 2
33 Form of literature* 1
34 Biography 1
35-37 Language 3
38-39 Korean government publication* 2
TABLE VII
Fields for Bibliographic Description
and partly rev&d in 1985, but, as the name implies, they are
for the description not containing those for the access point.
matters worse, it is slightly different from KCRS, Korean
cataloging rules-it is also now at the stage of bibliographic d
and tracing-despite the fact that both of them are based on
is, therefore, necessary to integrate two rules for description, with its
completion having rules for the access point.
The data element in this field generally has the same content as
USMARC, with some exceptions in some subfields reflecting Korean
bibliographic characteristics. One of the notable examples is the treat-
ment of Kwan-thing, the word or words written above or before the
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main title.g The format specifies in field 245 that the title can be
entered under that, either including or excluding Kwan-thing as an
added entry.
Data Elements ofAccess Point. Data elements related to the access point
in KORMARC are those of main, subject-added, added and of series-
added entry fields. Therefore, data elements in access points are divided
into main entry and added entry, and in each entry into personal name,
corporate name, meeting name and uniform title, as in USMARC,
following the main entry system. The fields related to the access point
(including classification number and subject analysis) are shown in
Table VIII.
All data in the main and added entry fields in KORMARC are
entered in Korean only--despite the fact that in Korean Hanja
(Chinese script) is widely used in everyday life. It is desirable, therefore,
to consider any method to link the entry in Korean to that in Hanja.”
Some of the subfields in these fields also reflect the Korean bib-
liographic characteristics. In the personal author fields, East-Asian
personal name is entered in a subfield ($a) in direct order, i.e. surname
and forename. This reflects library practice in Korea, using the Korean
personal name in the heading as in direct order, neither separating
surname and forename nor inverting it.” But to a Westerner, it is
entered in the same subfield in inverted form,
Another example of this kind is the subfield for the dynasty ($f)
and for its numeration ($g). The subfield for the dynasty is found in
the CHINESE MARC usage for their dynasty.” In the East-Asian
countries, dynasty is no less used than year as the element for the
chronological division, especially in the historical studies. It can
therefore be a useful subfield for retrieval for this purpose.
Other fields generally follow the specifications in USMARC or
UNIMARC, with some exceptions such as in the classification fields
adding data related to Korea, KDC (Korean Decimal Classification).
Data Elements for Identz&ation. The fields for identification basically
KORMARC 349
TABLE VIII
Fields for AccessPoint
--
T-L Fie\h
cm*___ _____ -~ ---- _
RWpi\W\tJj loo bkin es&q‘. P eXsQnd name
100 RAded entxyz Y erscsd name
110 Main entry: Corporate name
710 Added entry: Corporate name
111 Main entry: Meeting name
711 Added entry: Meeting name
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consist of’ the fields for identifying the record itself or the item that it
records. They are shown IX. Data elements in these fields
in Table
have rare characteristics, besides the differences in the tag.
Linking Entry Fields. One of the main enhancements in the draft of
the KS edition over the former edition is the introduction of linking
entry fields to link related items. They were partly included in the
Standard Edition of 1984, although usage was reserved and it was
intervened in the series entry fields with the tag 451-474. The fields in
the draft for KS are shown in Table X. The data elements in these
iields are generally the same as those in USMARC and/or UNIMARC.
The Central National Library ofKorea planned and initiated its library
automation in Korea using MARC formats as early as 1978. Since then
350 OHDONG-GEUN
TABLE IX
Fields for ldentz$cation
Tag Field
027 STRN
035 Systems control number
040 Cataloging source
042 Authentication code
053 Accession number
088 Report number
TABLE X
Linking Entry Fields
Tag Field
KORMARC has been the major concern of all members of the library
community. KORMARC has now become the essential element when
a library considers the library automation.
As discussed earlier, CNL has distributed its software and data, as
well as its tapes and printed cards to other institutions. CNL has also
introduced more than 300 interested personnel to KORMARC through
their workshop program. These continuous efforts have resulted in
widespread use of its data and formats. According to a survey in 1989,
14 university libraries and two special libraries have adopted KOR-
KORMARC 351
CONCLUDING REMARKS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to thank Dr. Jeong l’il-Mo, Dr. Lee Too-Young,
and Dr. Hyeon Kyu-Seob for their many instances of help.
REFERENCES
1 l’hc Central National Library. The Central National Library Selections 1973-1983.
Seoul. The Library. 1983, p. 114.
2 Korean Machine Readable Cataloging Anal Drafl. Seoul. CNL. 1980.
3 Korean Machine Readable Cataloging Standard Formatfor Monograph. Seoul. CNL 1984.
4 Lee Chun-Soo (1989) Korean National Library Information System promoted
by CNL. In Towa7-d.r the Acceleration of East-Asian Scholarly IrlfDrmation Flout, Vol. 1,
NACSIS. (In Korean and Japanese).
5 Korean Machine Readable Cataloging jbr Monograph. Draft for KS. Seoul. CNL. 1992.
6 Description in this chapter is mainly based on the format for monographs for KS.
7 UNIMARC Manual. London. IFLA. 1987, p. 2.
8 WLA. ZSBU(M). London. IFLA International Office for UBC. 1978. p. 2.
9 Jcong Pil-Mo and Oh Dong-Gcun (1990) On the processing of the Kwan-thing
m the title ofEast-Asian Materials- Prom Korean perspective. Cataloging & Classi-
,jcalion Quarlerly 12(2), pp. 83-104.
10 Jcong Pil-Mo and Oh Dong-Geun (1991) ‘The influence of pronunciation and
scripts on the East-Asian MARC formats. International Cataloguing and Bibliographic
Control 20(4), pp. 56-60.
II Lee .Jae-Chul (1967) On the form of the entry for Oriental names. Jounzal of
Humanities 18, pp. 65-92 (in Korean).
12 CHINESE MARC Format (2nd edition). Taipei. National Central Library, 1984.
13 Shin Hye-Sook and Lee Chi-Ju (1989) Current status of KORMARC. ‘Towards
tfle Acceleration of East-Asian Scholarly Information Flow, Vol. 1 (in Korean and in
Japanese).
14 Newsletter of libraries (published by CNL) 1992, 2(3), p. 4.