Here are some interesting statistics regarding MARC tag usage in WorldCat records, according to Karen Smith-Yoshimura at OCLC’s RLG Programs:
- Only 27 tags are used in more than 10% of WorldCat records.
- 52 tags are are used in 1% to 9% of WorldCat records.
- The remaining 147 tags show up in less than 1% of the records.
She wonders if some of these tags might not be necessary. I just wonder if we would do better to have a hierarchy involved… have a few basic top-level tags, and let catalogers go nuts filling in detail on the nested levels.
Karen’s post appeared on HangingTogether.org
