The purpose of this document is for developers and others who need to understand the mechanisms of MARCFRAME, the configuration file which handles conversion of MARC21 to JSON-LD and the roundtrip JSON-LD to MARC21. It has no aspirations of being a complete reference document but rather a guide to different functions available. The context is the Libris implementation of MARC21.
Marcframe is comprised of mainly three sections which represents three different MARC21 formats, bibliographic, authority and holdings. In addition there is an introductory part which contains reusable patterns mappings of codes to terms.
{
{bib},
{auth},
{hold}
}
For each section there is a chronological mapping of the fields 000-999 and their subfields to properties and classes which are definied either in the kbv: vocabulary or the group of terms which get a marc: prefix. Marc terms are used where the conversion do not fit in a Bibframe 2 form or the usage has in other ways been ambiguous.
The most common reason for a marc-prefix is LC combining two fields so it is not possible to separate the data making a reconversion impossible, or that they haven't made any attempts to code the information either with nac - no attempt to code, or ignore for things which have no meaning outside MARC21.
There are also certain postprocessing steps which can handle particular fields, for example date/year which needs to be exported to several fields (E.g. 008 + 264) depending on how they are formatted.
This is a list of keys in Marcframe which control certain functionality like repetition, grouping, inclusion of patterns etc.
about enables shortforms of more complicated or nested entitites. Used with pendingResource.
aboutAlias used to include an about form.
aboutEntity Defines which entity the property is a part of, thing means instance in bibliographic data.
aboutType -
addLink Is used when the entities (classes) are repeatable. If the entity can only occur once use link. The repetition of MARC21 fields is stated either in Libris Formathandbok or LC MARC21 specification.
addProperty(R) and property (NR) is used to define whether a property is repeatable or not.
allowedTypesOnRevert defines the only types that are allowed to be converted from RDF to MARC21. Defined together with pendingResources.
allowLinkOnRevert allows another property (other than link/addLink) to convert to a specific field. Only for conversion from RDF to MARC21.
embedded could be set to true which means that the entity is a so called structured value and it's value is always embedded locally to the graph and not linked to. In RDF also known as a b-node. The most common types is titles, identifiers and notes.
fallbackEntity this is a fallback of aboutEntity. This allows entities to be converted from RDF to MARC21, both if they are present on e.g. thing and/or work.
fixedDefault a fixed default value in fixed fields if none exists in the data. Only for conversion from RDF to MARC21.
ignored: true the field, subfield or fixed field will not be converted to RDF.
ignoreOnRevert: true This makes it possible to ignore conversion from RDF to MARC21 for certain subfields and fixed field tokens.
include includes the pattern which match the value.
inherit creates an inheritance from the specified field.
leadingPunctuation see punctuationChars.
link see addLink.
marcdefault a fixed default value of indicators and subfields if none exists in the data. Only for conversion from RDF to MARC21.
match used for matching values in indicator or occurence of fields with a when construction. [See exemple 2, which illustrates matching the right type of agent or work in the $100 field]
onRevertAppendValueFrom makes it possible to append value of a specified property to a subfield. Only for conversion from RDF to MARC21.
pendingResource makes it possible to create an hierarchical structure of entities.
property see addProperty.
punctuationChars states the interpunctuation which is stripped away and restored to the string/subfield in the conversion. Variants in usage is leadingPunctuation, trailingPunctuation and surroundingChars.
required: true is used in the conversion to MARC21. A required subfield is mandatory for the field to convert. If several subfields could be considered useful to surmise meaning but they are not all required, you could instead use the supplementary: true for the fields which can not standalone. [Example: $a is often required, $2 is often supplementary].
resourceType the entity which is created through the link or addlink.
silentRevert This lets a field revert entities without marking them as reverted. That allows for other fields to revert from the same entity. This is akin to the groupId mechanism, but allows for other fields to be more exclusive.
[Example: bib 700$t and 730 are disjoint, the former is preferred over the latter for the same entity, but a repeated 041 picks language from either of them without marking as reverted.]
spec used to verify indata and outdata as MARC21 conforms to expected forms. Can be specified with source (indata) and normalized (outdata), if normalize is absent it is by default expected to look like the incoming MARC21 source. In the spec we also define how our expected JSON-LD form looks like. If you make several testcases you can name them to let others know if there is a particular scenario or deviation you are testing.
splitValuePattern the regexp pattern used to separate strings into properties. [Example: identifier with trailing qualifier].
splitValueProperties defines the properties which the separated strings groups should map to. [Example: value, qualifier].
subfieldOrder used to specify subfield order in conversion to MARC21. If subfield order is absent alphabetical order is applied. [Example: “a q c z”].
surroundingChars see punctuationChars.
tokenmap used for mapping a list of (mostly) single character values from indicators or fixed fields.
trailingPunctuation see punctuationChars.
uriTemplate the base used for matchUriToken to create a link, usually from a code.
when see match.
"020": {
"include": ["identifier"],
"resourceType": "ISBN",
"$c": {"property": "acquisitionTerms"},
"$6": {"property": "marc:fieldref"},
"$8": {"property": "marc:groupid"},
"subfieldOrder": "a q c z"
}
For 020 there is an include which means it picks the pattern from the value “identifier”.
"identifier": {
"include": ["idbase"],
"$a": {
"property": "value",
"splitValuePattern": "^(.+?)(?:\\s+\\((.+)\\))?$",
"splitValueProperties": ["value", "qualifier"],
"punctuationChars": ",:;"
},
"$q": {"addProperty": "qualifier"},
"$z": {"addProperty": "marc:hiddenValue"}
},
For identifier you can also see it includes an idbase.
"idbase": {
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"addLink": "identifiedBy",
"embedded": true
},
So in total a 020 mapping could look like this.
"020": {
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"addLink": "identifiedBy",
"embedded": true
"resourceType": "ISBN",
"$a": {
"property": "value",
"splitValuePattern": "^(.+?)(?:\\s+\\((.+)\\))?$",
"splitValueProperties": ["value", "qualifier"],
"punctuationChars": ",:;"
},
"$q": {"addProperty": "qualifier"},
"$z": {"addProperty": "marc:hiddenValue"}
"$c": {"property": "acquisitionTerms"},
"$6": {"property": "marc:fieldref"},
"$8": {"property": "marc:groupid"},
"subfieldOrder": "a q c z"
}
match and when shows conditions for mapping depending on indicator or subfield value or presence of subfields.
"100" : {
"match": [
{
"when": "$t & i1=0",
"aboutAlias": "_:work",
"include": ["contributionPerson", "titledetails"]
},
{
"when": "$t & i1=1",
"aboutAlias": "_:work",
"include": ["contributionNameOfPerson", "titledetails"]
},
{
"when": "$t & i1=3",
"aboutAlias": "_:work",
"include": ["contributionFamily", "titledetails"]
},
{
"when": "$t",
"aboutAlias": "_:work",
"include": ["contributionPerson", "titledetails"]
},
{
"when": "i1=0",
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"aboutType": "Person",
"aboutAlias": "_:agent",
"include": "agentdataPerson"
},
{
"when": "i1=1",
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"aboutType": "Person",
"aboutAlias": "_:agent",
"include": "agentdataNameOfPerson"
},
{
"when": "i1=3",
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"aboutType": "Family",
"aboutAlias": "_:agent",
"include": "agentdataFamily"
},
{
"when": null,
"aboutEntity": "?thing",
"aboutType": "Person",
"aboutAlias": "_:agent",
"include": "agentdataPerson"
}
],
"$6": {"property": "marc:fieldref"},
"subfieldOrder": "a b c q d j g e 4 t n p l k f o v x y z"
}
- BIBFRAME 2 conversion specifications
- Libris Formathandbok
- LC MARC21 specification
- OCLC
- Translations and configuration files from old Libris systems.
- Statistics about field occurence.
In Marcframe there also occurs notes for these.
| Note | Description |
|---|---|
| NOTE: | General note. |
| NOTE:local | About local use from Libris formathandbok. |
| NOTE:LC | Note concerning Library of Congress MARC specification or BF2 mappning. |
| NOTE:OCLC | OCLC defined fields which commonly occurs in imported records. |