MARC 046 Special Coded Dates (Authority)

MARC field 046 in the Authority format contains information about dates that are associated with the entity described in the record.

Commonly-used tags

Indicators 

Undefined

Subfields 

ǂf - Birth date
ǂg - Death date
ǂk - Beginning or single date created
ǂl - Ending date created
ǂs - Start period
ǂt - End period
ǂu - Uniform Resource Identifier
ǂv - Source of information
ǂ2 - Source of date scheme

Note: new subfields ǂq (Establishment date) and ǂr (Termination date) added to MARC in April 2015 are not yet (August 2015) to be used, per DCM Z1. Continue to use ǂs (Start period) and ǂt (End period) according to their old definitions, which included establishment/termination date of a corporate body.

Policy and formulation

  • Create an 046 for every new and updated NAR
  • Include readily-available date information in this field, even if that information is not used in the authorized access point.
  • Use the Extended Date/Time Format (ǂ2 edtf) in all cases except for centuries (per PCC Best practice)
  • For centuries, follow ISO 8601 and use the first two digits of the year, e.g. "19" for "20th century". Omit the ǂ2 (an unspecified source is assumed to be ISO 8601)
  • In the absence of birth or death dates, record years of activity, if known. Do this even when an authorized access point is modified by an active century date. If years of activity are unknown, record the century in field 046
  • 046 subfields do not have to be parallel; record each element with as much information as you have for that element
  • If not absolutely confident/as compromise, put specific activity dates in 046 and "active Xth century" in 100 ‡d
  • Generally do not edit an existing date range if a work is found outside those dates (e.g. 1620 work found for Printer, active 1607-1616)

Examples

046  ǂf 1490 ǂg 1556 ǂ2 edtf
1001 Sauffer, Gervas, ǂd 1490-1556 

046  ǂf 1820 ǂg 1886-05-30 ǂ2 edtf
1001 Dobrzański, Jan, ǂd 1820-1886

046  ǂs 1705 ǂt 1721 ǂ2 edtf
1001 Speed, Anne, ǂd active 18th century

046  ǂs 18 ǂt 19
1001 Stuart, Otho, ǂd active 19th century-20th century

046  ǂf [1615,1616] ǂg 1685 ǂ2 edtf
1001 Clifford, Anthony, ǂd 1615 or 1616-1685

External links