MARC 21 Concise Format Listings

The purpose of this project was to identify several different MARC 21 Concise Format listings for several versions of a particular work held in a library collection and to compare and contrast those formats. Additionally, several Web sites that do not employ MARC 21 Formats were also accessed in order to provide further examples of the ways in which description is employed to categorize or identify a work and its content and authorship. The works elected for the analysis was, in its original form, Leo Tolstoy's novel, War and Peace, described as an epic novel of Russian history and society, published in 1865 to 1869 in series form, which tells the story of Russia during the Napoleonic Era (Wikipedia, 2003).

War and Peace was selected as the focus of this analysis because it has been adapted by many literary and musical artists, providing a variety of forms that include the novel itself, motion pictures, "talking books" or audio books, an opera, and so forth (Wikipedia, 2003). Additionally, given its place in world literature, Tolstoy's novel has also been the subject of a wealth of critical analyses and interpretations such as Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace (Miller & Orwin, 1997-1998).

The MARC 21 Concise Format offers a record structure that consists of three main components: The Leader, the Directory, and the Variable Fields (MARC 21 Concise Formats, 2002). Specifically, these components are described as f

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aring in the opera (all in the 700 tag). In the 600 and 650 categories, the Napoleonic wars, campaigns, and Russia, along with Napoleon are referenced. The Library of Congress holds several different versions of the opera in its collection (LC Control Numbers 2001335927 and 84245743). In these works' MARC 21 records, the 100 category refers to Prokofiev as the author. What is consistent across all of these MARC 21 Records in the 650/651 tag categories are references to the Napoleonic wars and their time frame, campaigns, Russia, and in a number of instances, drama and/or opera (the latter evident in the case of the sound recordings. In the 700 category, which lists the name of the primary author or authors of a work (composers, performers, or conductors in the case of an opera), Tolstoy is universally referenced in all of the records that have been discussed herein. Yet another entry for War and Peace is in the form of a screenplay made into a full length feature film. As Library of Congress Control Number 89708519, this film was produced by Mosfilm Studios and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. In the 245 tag category, which appears on every MARC 21 record thus discussed, the fact that this is a filmed version of the nove
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2387
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)