Part of the [Unbound Libraries Documentation](https://constantvzw.org/wefts/unboundlibraries.en.html)

# IM * MARCRU: on readable records that invite writing


**=LDR** 8 00601nam a  00217       
**=001** 1383
**=003** GRA
**=245 00 $aTitle:** MARCRU: readable records that invite writing

**=260 \\\\ $aPublisher:** Constant, this is still undefined where and when

**=300 \\\\ $aPhysical description:** A txt file so far, an html page eventually, a catalog record tentatively (i.e. a database entry)

**=546 \\\\ $aLanguage:** english

**=520 \\\\ $aSummary:** This text is written according to the Marc 21 format for bibliographic data, which makes it a Marc record. [Marc stands for machine readable cataloging](https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/)
According to the standard, and its interpretation, some information concerns the entity being cataloged, some other concerns the record itself.
Libraries all over the world have adopted cataloging standards, to be able to exchange bibliographic information, to import data from shared databases, to move their data from one library system to another. What allows these exchanges is the mediation of computers. It is for machines that librarians format bibliographic information. The aim is for records to be readable and interpretable by machines, which in turn will provide something readable to humans. The standards governing Marc21 - like the records constructed, maintained and exchanged following those standards - are decided upon, updated, interpreted, questioned, revised, and written by people. The efficacy of the standards could be said to be measurable in terms of the erasure of these human engagements. Since the move to a new catalog software and the adoption of the Marc21 format, it became possible for librarians of the Rietveld and Sandberg Library to use the "Z39.50" system to import records from online databases, the most complete being the one mantained by the Library of Congress of the United States (LC). This added functionality and possibility gave rise to the unexpected consequence that the catalog -- until then manually maintained by the librarians in all its bibliographic spaces -- started being increasingly deprived of its locality, by resorting too often to the Library of Congress catalog, via the Z39.50 system. The relief from repetitive labour all of a sudden threatened the situated aspect of the catalog.
Socio-technical dilemmas of this kind are what [Infrastructural Manoeuvres (I.M.)](https://catalogue.rietveldacademie.nl/about.html) has been [giving attention to](https://unboundlibraries.constantvzw.org/reader/c.pdf) within their work on the Library technical ecosystem.
I.M. started with the aim of foregrounding the infrastructures supporting and constituting a library, from the integrated library software to the systems of classification and categorization, investigating their social and technical dimension and creating spaces for discussion and intervention in the physical space of the library as well as in its digital spaces. An intense moment of discussion and exchange such as the Unbound Libraries worksession, creates [ripples in the pockets within the system](https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibraries_marcru), with new practices proposed and taken up by librarians, new cataloging fields being inaugurated, as well as new developments and interventions in the catalog website.
This record attempts to make itself readable to humans while remaining readable -- albeit poorly digestible -- for machines, in its structured content as well as in its invisible structuring. The protocols and procedures for adjusting content to the Marc framework result from discussions, decisions, negotiations and conflicts that find no space in records themselves.
This text develops from reading into a Marc record by writing into it, and viceversa.
This text is therefore a written piece, a record of conversations and interventions sparked by the Unbound Libraries worksession, a tentative introduction to the Marc21 standard and its particular interpretation by librarians of the Rietveld and Sandberg Library, and a record of itself.
This record has no pretense of being accurate, exhaustive nor final. Even though it tries to stick to standards, it is probably corrupted. 

**=538 \\\\ $aDisclaimer:** Importing this record in a catalog may provoke damages to the database and ensuing records.

**=520  1# $aReview:** "A wish to tell stories and undo some narratives by looking at MARC records. In this bibliographic aberration, in which the Marc 21 standard is turned upon itself in an attempt to make itself readable, while at the same time making the author unreadable and the librarian an author, the record detaches itself from its referent (or is collapsed in it). This record refers to no book, while referring to many. This record has no item, no volume, no entity attached, let alone an easily attributable classification code. It pretentiously refers to itself as a publication being recorded while attempting -- and failing -- to undo its authorial value by inscribing itself in a bibliographic record."

**=084 \\\\ $aClassification code/Call Number:** The value entered in this field corresponds to the spine label of a physical item; a simple code comprised of a few numbers and letters that defines a unique position for the item across the shelves of the library. Classication systems articulate the relation between codes and subject categories and classification reference guides are used to decide upon the code for an entry. In the Rietveld and Sandberg Library the classification system in place is called [SISO](http://www.bibnet.be/files/download/7ffac790-0b58-4cae-924d-337a2922b6db/Regelgeving/Inhoudelijke%20ontsluiting/Classificaties/SISO%202021_Cultuurconnect_voorlopige%20versie%20editie5.pdf), while the most commonly used systems are the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Universal Decimal Classification and the Library of Congress Classification. Librarians constantly struggle with these codes by searching them, translating them, interpreting them, changing them, adapting them, ultimately, [adapting to them](https://video.constantvzw.org/Unbound_Libraries/annika_buysse_200526.webm#t=00:35:40,00:38:38 "These struggles repeat at different scales, from the smallest library to the larger institutions; for example even Cultuur Connect, the official network of flemish public libraries, has to carefully negotiate SISO structures with their counterpart in the Netherlands..."). Overused categories are split into subcategories codes, new categories can be squeezed within numeric gaps and unused categories are sometimes squatted.
This struggle reflects the fact that classification is not simply an address for finding books -- and even defining the particular spatial context and neighbors of a book is loaded with responsibility --  but constitutes a decision of framing some material in a single and univocal way  in the spectrum of knowledge defined by standards (which goes from information 000 to history 900, unfolding in a fictional linearity). 
These loaded decisions, which are then hidden behind an alphanumeric code, are perhaps [the most difficult and slow decisions for librarians and the most invisible to library users](https://unboundlibraries.constantvzw.org/reader/t.pdf "Quoting Hope Holson, we could say that unless made aware, users will \" take the classification for granted as though it were a natural landscape rather than a well-manicured lawn that is the product of intellectual labor.\"")
It is surely so in the particular context of the Rietveld and Sandberg Library. Nevertheless, books need a place and there is no way to sidestep the question of classification (unless we want to transform a library in a book depot with closed shelves). Similarly to a book stuck in the classification limbo at the Rietveld and Sandberg library, if this record had a physical item attached, it would have a yellow post-it over it saying: SISO? 
**=084 \\\\ $a**SISO?

**=100 1\\ $aAuthor, The:** The primary author of a work; if multiple authors are present, one is chosen to be the primary and the others are listed in field 700. Contrarily to most fields, the bibliographic field 100 may contain only one subfield $a (Personal name). This is here (missing) on purpose. The unbound documentation abounds with discussions that [problematize the normative framework of individual authorship](https://video.constantvzw.org/Unbound_Libraries/eva_weinmayr_conversation_200513.webm#t=00:06:00,00:09:25 "Well summed up in Eva Weinmayr's introduction to her involvement with researching and experimenting with collective authorship, not shying away from the problems therein." ). Different strategies are possible, for example, in the archive of [Mayday Rooms](https://maydayrooms.org/), whose collected items have mostly mixed, unknown, anonymous or collective forms of authorship, [the field 'Author' is mostly left blank](https://video.constantvzw.org/Unbound_Libraries/rosemary_grennan_200525.webm#t=00:31:17,00:32:00).
Another reason as to why this field is intentionally left (not) blank has to do with the degree of authorship of librarians. It is surely unnecessary and unwanted that a record should be authored, after all, the information it contains are supposedly objective; at best, a system will automatically timestamp the workstation from which a record is edited or created.
Agamben cites Bonaventura in characterizing the different figures of writing and its transmission in/as tradition: "A man might write the works of others, adding and changing nothing, in which case he is simply called a “scribe” (scriptor). Another writes the work of others with additions which are not his own; and he is called a “compiler” (compilator). Another writes both others’ work and his own, but with others’ work in principal place, adding his own for purposes of explanation; and he is called a “commentator” (commentator) ... Another writes both his own work and others’ but with his own work in principal place adding others’ for purposes of confirmation; and such a man should be called an “author” (auctor)."
These roles have their modern equivalent and proper place in a record. But what of records themselves?  From LC authorial statements to the imports of data via Z39.50 by librarian-compilers, the agency of catalogers in knowledge production and transmission is concealed in records as the work of simple scribes. Accomplices in consolidating the power of tradition, or conspirers against it, librarian-scribes always leave their mark. These traces can be found only by looking at the full MARC record, and some effort and record-literacy are needed to disclose their meaning. Approaching the catalog critically means learning and teaching how to read "the power that leaks out" therefrom. Hereby, that peculiar type of scribe that is the librarian, who works in the shade of authors and of the bookshelves filled with their works, starts showing herself and her interference, like illuminated margins of medieval manuscripts that start protruding from the edge.

**=700 \\\\ $aOther authors and roles:** The proper place of the "many", over and against the "one"(100). Hereby should go the participants of the worksession, who activated some of the discussions hereby referenced, and the librarians who partook in the discussion that provided the background and horizon to the unbound conversations... Reinterpreting the local uses of bibliographic standards [in light of the CC4r, this field is the place for "current" as well as "future" authors.](https://constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html)
**=700 \\\\ $a**Erlynn Pasanea
**=700 \\\\ $a**Jip van Steenis
**=700 \\\\ $a**Pieter Verbeke
**=700 \\\\ $a**Lizzy van Italie
**=700 \\\\ $a**Martino Morandi
**=700 \\\\ $a**Anita Burato
**=700 \\\\ $a**Unbound Libraries participants
**=700 \\\\ $a**MARCRU (Marc Research Unit)

**=590 \\\\ $aLocal Note:** Local interpretations of standards are what create the particular consistency of a catalog. 

**=504 \\\\ $aBibliography note:** Includes references and links to [unbound scriptoria (pads)](https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibraries_index) as well as to unrecorded conversations. It also refers implicitly and explicitly to the Unbound Libraries Reader and would like to be a contribution to it. [("what is missing? :)  - something on standard librarian tools: MARC record, Library of Congress")](https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unboundlibrary_reader)

**=585 \\\\ $aExhibition note:** used more generally to refer to the happening or exhibition related to the publication. Something like: 
**=585 \\\\ $a**Unbound Libraries worksession, From 1 to 5 June 2020 @ on-line,  Constant - Association for Art and Media 

**=650 \\\\ $aSubject Heading(s):** This field is intimately connected to the classification code (084), in that it is the place whereby a publication is defined in its content and field of knowledge. Unlike the classification code, which is usually not readeable to non-librarians (but can be tentatively guessed by physically browsing the shelves), subject headings are often essential means by which materials are found through the catalog interface. Unlike the classification code which is singular (one item can only have one position in the shelves), subject headings can be multiple; they are nevertheless organized hierarchically, moving from the generic to the specific while remaining in the language of universality.
But like the classification code is not simply an address to locate an item on a shelf, but a decision about the proper domain and context of a book, subject headings are not simple guides and links to materials, they are attempts at organizing knowledge in an objective and unbiased way through a limited - and limiting - controlled vocabulary. 
[Subject Headings have been a battle field for politically motivated campaigns](https://unboundlibraries.constantvzw.org/reader/n.pdf "A quick overview of these battles, their contexts and different types of strategies to approach the political question of cataloguing can be found in Emily Drabisnky's article Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the politics of correction") aimed at resisting and modifying the way in which particulars are subsumed under the universal perpetrating through language forms of violence happening outside the catalog. 
Within the context of the Rietveld and Sandberg library this field is never locally attributed. The library prefers to use the looser field 690 for Local Keywords, which are record-wise more transparent in stating their situated, subjective and non-categorical aspect. Whenever 650 exists then, it has been imported by external databases. For this reason, field 650 might read something like 
**=650 \\\\ $a**Subject Heading, aka what the Library of Congress has said about this book (and was kept)

**=690 \\\\ $aLocal keyword:** This field hosts an unordered list of content descriptions, from the general discipline to particular keywords and personal names. No controlled vocabulary nor hierarchy system is in place (in the Rietveld and Sandberg Library), making local keywords one of the most messy and/although fundamental fields for interfacing the catalog and the collection. That 'local' and 'messy' should often appear next to each other throughout this record should not dissuade us from making local fields into the most essential fields of catalogs. A messy catalog is a lived catalog. 

**=998 \\\\ $aRecord of movements:** This field has been inaugurated during the worksession. Its introduction implies a new cataloging procedure of keeping record of classification changes. Changes of classification happen constantly and for multiple reasons. Sometimes a whole section is restructured and books are moved to a new location, sometimes single books obstinately present themselves as unclassifiable or mislocated and await a new decision, post-its all over relaying the question and responsibility for choice to another librarian or to the future-shelf, who is imagined as conveniently less hesitant. Often difficult books await in stacks for some discussions to reach consensus; meanwhile they become entry points for conversations about the politics of classification - and for the invisible struggles of the librarians - with library visitors. Once settled a discussion - at least for a while - the standard procedure was to overwrite the old code with a new one. To make the ongoingness of cataloging and classification negotiations readable, this field keeps trace of movements across classification and shelves, exposing its rewritability and historizing a book's current placing. ["Such traces can reveal the limit of the universal knowledge organization project, inviting technical interventions  that highlight the constructed nature of classification structures and controlled vocabularies".](https://unboundlibraries.constantvzw.org/reader/n.pdf)

**=999 \\\\ $aMigration detritus:** this is leftover information from the previous catalog database, agglutinated in a single field; a visible trace of the attempt at organizing local usages and the chaos within exacting standards. In Marc21 the number 9 stands for local tags, in any of the three positions (e.g. 690 is local keywords, 9 being in the second position). Field 999 represents here therefore the extreme of local miscellaneous, it hardly makes sense even to current librarians. It is the result of a typical librarian/archivist care for keeping stuff, even if it's messy, because it may turn out helpful or meaningful at some point. 

**=666 \\\\ $aRemoved content:** This is a response to overwriting/correcting. This field has come into existence in the context of the worksession. That which is removed remains recorded in the record as removed, as a trace of previously endorsed description or characterization, or previously accepted fields from the Library of Congress, landed in a Z39.50 flood. While addressing several conversations concerning the politics of correction and critical library practices, this field also opens up the question of accumulation, of infinite archival and digital plenitude. In relation to both discussions, the current 666 field notes that in the writing and re-writing of this record, the words deleted or permanently modified, will exceed those unchanged. Not everything is to be retained for the sake of knowledge, history, bibliography or biography, and the choice to keep the removed should remain contextual. The newly found Nietzsche's grocery list that Foucault asks whether it should be included in a new edition of his works, or the bug that Grace Hopper found in the Mark II Aiken Relay computer, are the figures of what divides the catalog from the archive. They create one domain by being removed and another by being kept. The inclusion of one into the other creates a malfunction in which the particular, the man in flesh and bones and the curious insect, reveals and baffles the power of the author/machine/catalog function.  
**=666 \\\\ $c998 $a**  ***After the new procedure of keeping trace of classification changes [998] was introduced in the cataloging practice of the Rietveld and Sandberg Library, this debris field revealed itself as a means of backtracing classification changes that took place between the implementation of the new catalog and the introduction of the new procedure. 999 $c in fact, holds the classification code books had before the translation to a new system (RebAl proposed to use data conversion or translation instead of data migration)\[link??\]. A proposal of restoration has followed the discovery. Field 999 will be searched for classification changes that have been lost by overwriting and these will be added to field 998. From IT by other means to cataloging by other means, undoing overwriting to tell stories of movements through the structures of classification.***

**=930 \\\\ $aLocal context of activation:** this field is ambiguously used to refer to the event in which the publication was activated and/or to the group/person/project selecting the book as part of a collection. Thanks to this (very) local field, one can move from one book to others, independently from their distances on shelves and from keywording. The consistency of the selection is given by the event and/or subject who performed the gathering. The same book can have multiple 930 entries, therefore linking different contexts with each other. 
**=930 \\\\ $a**Unbound Libraries
**=930 \\\\ $a**Infrastructural Manoeuvres

**=270 \\\\ $aAddress:** The field available for contacts related to the content of the bibliographic item. Unlike published material that can be revised only through new editions, a record remains open to modification. Even though the situations triggering such changes often come into the library through the community surrounding it, it is only librarians that have the power to modify records. One of the main interventions in the Rietveld Library catalog that was initiated in the context of the worksession, is making the possibility of record rewriteability visible and accessible to non-librarians. To extend this possibility to this textual record, too, we attach here our email. Please get in touch with us, we would be delighted to discuss further the content of this record.
**=270 \\\\ $g** Infrastructural Manoeuvres $m[infrastructural@manoeuve.rs](mailto:infrastructural@manoeuve.rs)

**=856 \\\\ $aElectronic Resource Location:** This is the standard field for including the URL of the electronic resource to which the record refers. Here the record links to itself.
**=856 \\\\ $u**<https://constantvzw.org/wefts/unboundlibraries-im.en.html>





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