EBSCO Publishing Proprietary Databases

MARC21 Record Format and Attribute Sets 

May 7, 2003 - Iliad Release - Supercedes RDKZ3950.doc

July 18 2003 - Jupiter Release - Corrected 008 field positions 

November 4, 2003 - Keystone Release - Added 020, 592, 956; Changed Label on 500

April 15, 2003 - Morpheus Release - Removed 653 from attr. 21

EBSCO Publishing offers a broad range of full text and bibliographic databases designed to meet the reference needs of all library types worldwide. EBSCO Publishing is the world’s most prolific aggregator of full text journals, magazines and other sources. We provide quality database products and services for tens of thousands of libraries around the globe. The quality, depth and sheer number of full text publications available through EBSCOhost® and Z39.50 databases are unmatched - as evidenced by flagship product lines including Academic Search™ Business Source® and MasterFILE™. 

Z39.50 access to EBSCOhost

Please contact EBSCO Publishing Tech Support at HYPERLINK "mailto:eptech@epnet.com"eptech@epnet.com for:

the IP address to our Z39.50 port 

a list of database short names you need access to

your account name, (EBSCO uses a three part identification field separated by periods)

your password

Updates to Z39.50 MARC21 Fields and Attributes 

If you have any questions.

Bath Profile Information:

The EBSCO server is Version 3 and we support elements of Conformance Level 0. It does not supply SUTRS records for BRIEF and FULL element sets. It does supply SUTRS records for full text of the profile.

5.A Functional Area A: Basic Bibliographic Search and Retrieval 

5.A.0.1. Author Search - Precision Match for Established Name Heading

EBSCO indexes the author in the form last name, first name. EBSCO supports this search fully.

5.A.0.2. Title Search - Keyword

EBSCO supports this search fully.

5.A.0.3. Subject Search - Keyword 

EBSCO supports this search fully. 

5.A.0.4. Any Search - Keyword

EBSCO does support 1016 (any) in all Proprietary databases. We are also updating our older 3rd Party databases to support this field in an ongoing manner. 

Higher Functional Levels

EBSCO supports higher functionality such as SCAN, many different USE attributes, all relation attributes, and truncation 1, 2, 3, and 100.

5.B. Functional Area B: Bibliographic Holdings Search and Retrieval

This functional area is not defined at this time

5.C. Functional Area C: Cross-Domain Search and Retrieval

EBSCO does not support SUTRS record format for BRIEF and FULL element sets at this time.

5.C.0.1. Creator Search - Keyword

EBSCO indexes the author in the form last name, first name. EBSCO supports this search fully.

5.C.0.2. Title Search - Keyword

EBSCO supports this search fully.

5.C.0.3. Subject Search - Keyword

EBSCO supports this search fully for most general interest databases. Some non-standard databases such as MEDLINE have non-standard subject indexes (EG MeSH). 

5.C.0.4. Any Search - Keyword

EBSCO has created index 1016 on all Proprietary databases, and the search will be fully supported. Most of the 3rd Party databases have created index 1016, and the remainder are being updated, at which time the search will be fully supported for all databases offered by EBSCO.

MARC Record Structure:

The data is formatted in a standard MARC record structure. This record structure conforms to the international standard for bibliographic interchange on magnetic tape (ISO 2709-1981) and with its American equivalent ANSI Z39.2-1979. The record structure used is the same as that used for MARC21, Canadian MARC, UK MARC and many others.

This document is in two parts. The first describes fields in the MARC record format sent by the EBSCOhost Z39.50 server. Not every database has every field. The second part describes the semantics of the Z39.50 BIB-1 Attribute set as it relates to EBSCOhost.

MARC FIELD DEFINITIONS:

Note:  for the purposes of the following table, the subfield introducer code (Hex 1F) is shown as a dollar sign ($).

Full Text

If full text for the item is available, it may be sent via MARC21 or requested via a proprietary mechanism.

856 field.  If full text is available for the item, an 856 field is included as follows:

                 856 $i TEXT*

This is an indication to the client that full text can be requested via another mechanism (if not using MARC21 format- see the document EBSCOHost Full Text Via Z39.50 and Non-EBSCO Clients for more information).  This field is generated in both BRIEF and FULL element sets.  If a client makes use of the alternative Full text delivery mechanism, the server will stop sending full text in the MARC21 because it knows then that the client can request full text separately.

900 field.  Each full text title and paragraph is converted into one 900 field.  The result is that the MARC21 record will have the title, abstract, author, and then as much of the full text as fits in the record size requested by the client.

MARC FIELD DEFINITIONS for Authorities and Indexes

MARC21 for Journal Name--[Database Name]

MARC21 for Subjects-[Database Name]

BIB-1 ATTRIBUTES

There are six types of attributes:  Use, Relation, Position, Structure, Truncation, and Completeness.  The Use attribute, if provided, identifies a set of access points against which the term is to be matched.  The Relation, Completeness, Truncation and Position attributes, if provided, specify additional match criteria. The Structure attribute, if provided, identifies the form in which the term has been supplied.  

Within an attribute list, each attribute type is optional.  However, if a particular attribute type is not supplied, this document does not address target behavior -- a given target might supply a default attribute, dynamically select an appropriate attribute based on the other attributes supplied, or fail the search because it requires that the attribute type be supplied.

This section describes the way the EBSCOhost server responds to various attributes in the BIB-1 Attribute set described in Appendix 3 of the ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995 document.

1. BIB-1 Use Attributes (TYPE = 1)

These entry points are used by the database. The numbers correspond to the BIB-1 USE attribute set. If an unsupported USE attribute is specified, the server uses a default set of search indexes. Note not all USE attributes match closely to semantics of the BIB-1 set.

Entry point indexes can be Word (Word with Location and Stopwords applied, WLS) , Word & Location Only (no Stopwords applied, WL); Word Only (no Location or Stopwords applied, W), Phrase (Literally, P), or Numerically indexed, N. In a Word index, each word is separately indexed. A Phrase index searches the entire field as one word, exact phrase. A Numeric index can also be searched using the relation attributes. 

2. BIB-1 Relation Attributes (TYPE = 2)

Relation attributes describe the relationship of the access point (left side of the relation) to the search term as qualified by the attributes (right side of the relation), e.g., Date-publication <= 2000.

Relation attribute Equal -- specifies an exact match (subject to possible qualification by the truncation or structure attributes).

Relation attributes Less than, Less than or equal, Greater than or equal, and Greater than -- meaningful only when both the term value as qualified by the attributes and the access point can be realized as elements of a set that has an inherent implied order.

3. BIB-1 Position Attribute (TYPE = 3)

The Position attribute specifies the location of the search term within the field or subfield in which it appears.

EBSCOhost does not use this attribute.

4. BIB-1 Structure Attributes  (TYPE = 4)

The Structure attribute specifies the type of search term (e.g., a single word, a phrase, several words to be treated as multiple single terms, etc.).

EBSCOhost does not use this attribute.

5. BIB-1 Truncation Attribute (TYPE = 5)

The Truncation attribute specifies whether one or more characters may be omitted in matching the search term in the target system at the position specified by the Truncation attribute.  For example, a word in a search term may be 1) right truncated, in which case the word is treated both as a complete word and as the beginning of a longer word; 2) left truncated in which case the word is treated both as a complete word and the ending of a longer word; 3) left and right truncated, in which case the word is treated as a complete word and the beginning or ending of a longer word; 4) and embedded truncation, in which case the word is treated as a complete word and as a longer word with additional characters at the point where the truncation symbol, "#", appears in the search term. 

For Right truncation, left truncation, and Left and right truncation, the characters affected by the truncation are determined by the value of the structure attribute.

6. BIB-1 Completeness Attribute (TYPE = 6)

The Completeness attribute specifies that the contents of the search term represent a complete or incomplete subfield or a complete field. Completeness indicates whether additional words should appear in a field or subfield with the search term.

EBSCOhost does not use this attribute.

BIB-1 Use Attributes for Authorities and Indexes

Journal Name--[Database Name]

This database can be scanned  (Z39.50 SCAN PDU) to retrieve entries in the Journal index. Journal scanned in this database can be searched in the main database using BIB-1 index 2033 (phrase indexed). 

1. BIB-1 USE ATTRIBUTES

2. BIB-1 Relation Attributes, 3. BIB-1 Position Attributes, 4. BIB-1 Structure Attribute, 5. BIB-1 Truncation Attribute (TYPE = 5), 6. BIB-1 Completeness Attribute (TYPE = 6)

These attributes are not used for this database. 

Subjects--[Database Name]

This database can be scanned  (Z39.50 SCAN PDU) to retrieve entries in the SUBJECTS index. Subjectss scanned in this database can be searched in the main database using BIB-1 index 2021 (phrase index}. 

1. BIB-1 USE ATTRIBUTES

BIB-1 Relation Attributes, BIB-1 Position Attributes, BIB-1 Structure Attribute

These attributes are not used for this database. 

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