MARC 655 Index Term - Genre/Form

MARC field 655 in the bibliographic format contains information about the genre and/or form of an item. This field is repeatable.

Commonly-used tags

Indicators
1st indicator - Type of heading

# - Basic

2nd indicator - Thesaurus

7 - Source specified in ǂ2

Subfield delimiters

ǂ3 Materials specified (NR)
ǂa Genre/form term (R)
ǂ2 Source of term (NR)
ǂ5 Institution to which field applies (NR)

Policy and formulation

• For new cataloging, apply at least one genre/form term. In general, any genre terms are fair game, while form terms (such as Calf bindings) should be avoided. This is in contrast to previous practice (before about 2014) when terms from a pre-selected list.
• See Connexion Bibliographic Constant Data for standard Folger preferred terms
  • Use controlled vocabularies; if no suitable terms can be found in a published vocabulary, consider creating a local term and submitting to RBMS or another appropriate thesaurus.
  • Use the RBMS Controlled Vocabulary for Rare Materials Cataloging if a suitable term exists.
  • Use the Getty's Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) if a suitable term isn't found in CVRMC.
  • If neither has the appropriate term, use the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) or Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms.
  • As a last resort, use Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) or a local term.
• Follow the genre/form term in the subfield ǂa (or ǂx, when used) with ending punctuation, a period or closing parenthesis but not both. (See examples below.)
• Always include a subfield ǂ2 to specify the source of the term, using an abbreviation from the Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes List.
• For copy-specific genres/forms, include subfield ǂ5 DFo
• As of 2014, Folger catalogers do not subdivide genre/form terms (exception: for art, subdivide 655s for Portraits into $x Male or $x Female if applicable).
• Be accurate when providing terms; consult established scope notes and Folger scope notes. However, be wary of being too specific, and include broader terms when this may support user access, e.g., Use both Comedies and Plays. Some narrower constant data records contain clusters to do this automatically.
• When deciding whether or not it's worth providing controlled access to copy-specific information, ask yourself "If I were a researcher interested in [possible term], would I be disappointed if this came up from the vault?" For example, someone studying manicules would probably want to see a book with just one example of a manicule, but someone interested in annotations probably wouldn't appreciate discovering that the book they'd been waiting for only had one or two brief annotations.

Examples

655 7 ǂa Publishers' advertisements. ǂ2 rbgenr

655 7 ǂ3 Sh.Misc. 1847 ǂa Presentation inscriptions (Provenance) ǂ2 rbprov ǂ5 DFo

655 7 ǂa Picture postcards. ǂ2 aat

655 7 ǂa Manuscripts from print. ǂ2 local

655 7 ǂa Translations (documents) ǂ2 aat

External links

• MARC 655 - Index Term-Genre/Form (R)
• 655 Index Term--Genre/Form (R)