MARC 520 Summary, Etc.

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MARC field 520 in the bibliographic format contains information that describes the scope and general contents of the cataloged materials. This could be a summary, abstract, annotation, review, or only a phrase describing the material.

Policy and formulation

Common tagging

First Indicator 

# - Summary
2 - Scope and content

Subfield Codes 

ǂa - Summary, etc. (NR)
ǂc - Assigning source (NR)
ǂu - Uniform Resource Identifier (R)

Acquisitions Night labels

  • If readily available, copy and paste the text of Acquisitions Night labels into field 520.
    • First indicator blank; ǂc DFo at end.
  • Edit as necessary to take out evaluative judgments and references to the Folger or individual copies.


Original label 

Eton College was already more than 200 years old when schoolboys there learned their Latin literature from this anthology, showing selections from Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria. The text was printed again, enlarged, in 1701 then throughout the 18th century, but few examples survive. Only two other copies of this 1679 edition are known, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. That is not unusual as schoolbooks tended to be used hard by students and eventually gave out and became waste paper.

Edited for Hamnet record 

Eton College was already more than 200 years old when schoolboys there learned their Latin literature from this anthology, showing selections from Ovid’s Amores and Ars Amatoria. The text was printed again, enlarged, in 1701 then throughout the 18th century, but few examples survive.