MARC 21 Authority Records for GSAFD Genre Terms

Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, Etc., 2nd edition, was published in 2000. The Guidelines constitute a recommendation for national standard practice in the provision of genre and subject access to individual works of fiction, drama, poetry, humor, and folklore in all formats. The publication is available from ALA Editions through the ALA Online Store.

In order to provide libraries with the ability to more fully implement the Guidelines and provide enhanced access to works of fiction in library catalogs, machine-readable authority records have been created for the form/genre headings in chapter 1 of GSAFD. A file of the records in the MARC 21 format is available for loading into library databases. The size of the file is 58 KB, and it contains 153 records. An ASCII version of the file (71 KB) is also available for viewing and printing with a text editor.

The authority records include reference structure and scope notes from the printed list. (It should be emphasized that the thesaural hierarchy of the form/genre list is incomplete, since the higher level terms, such as Fiction, Drama, so on, are not included in the list.) The coding of the authority records is standard MARC 21 that would be found in other subject heading systems, such as LCSH. Coding specific to the GSAFD records is noted below:

001 Control Field: Contains a GSAFD control number.
003 Control Field: Contains the control number identifier for the ALCTS Subject Analysis Committee, IlChALCS, whose control number is in the 001 field.
008/11 fixed field byte: Coded z for other subject heading system/thesaurus, which in this case is gsafd.
040 |a subfield: Coded IlChALCS, which identifies the Subject Analysis Committee as the orginal cataloging agency.
040 |f subfield: Identifies the subject heading system/thesaurus as gsafd.

(Note that a new MARC Organization Code, IlChALCS, was created for the Subject Analysis Committee, so that the source of the GSAFD authority records could be appropriately identified.) An example of a GSAFD authority record in ASCII format is given below.

The files can be downloaded from the GSAFD Site at Northwestern University. The MARC 21 file is named gsafd.mrc, and the ASCII file is named gsafd.mrc.txt.

It is recommended that Internet Explorer be used for copying the ASCII file. The MARC file can be transferred using either Internet Explorer or Netscape. Please note that no additional technical support will be provided; it is assumed that those wishing to use the files are familiar with FTP, and that they have access to sufficient resources for loading the MARC file into their local catalog. However, if there are problems with the FTP server itself, contact Tony Olson at the Northwestern University Galter Health Sciences Library, (312) 503-8125.

The ALCTS CCS Subject Analysis Committee would like to express its appreciation to Gary Strawn of Northwestern University for his help in creating the authority records and making the file accessible.

Example