There are libraries that want to show the MARC 340 "Physical medium" information on the OPAC. At the moment, I'm not quite sure of the best way to render this information in a way that will make sense to end users, and not overly crowd the UI.
I would like to hear more about why this might be a special problem compared to other fields. Do you have any examples of how other systems display this information? Do you have a sample record to test with?
(In reply to Owen Leonard from comment #1) > I would like to hear more about why this might be a special problem compared > to other fields. Do you have any examples of how other systems display this > information? I haven't found any system that displays the 340 yet, but the National Library of New Zealand are going to start using it in their records from August 1st, so I'm planning to check back on their system in the time to come. > Do you have a sample record to test with? The sample I'm working with right now has the following: 300 $a73 pages ; $c29cm 340 $g colour $p illustrations This is a simple example, although even it presents a problem. In the XSLT, would we say something like the following? Description: 73 pages ; 29cm Additional description: colour illustrations On the Library of Congress webpage for MARC 340, you can see examples like this: 340 ##$3self-portrait$arice paper$b7" x 9"$ccolored inks$enone$hbetween entry for April 7 and April 19, 1843. Taken like the 300, we would render that like this: Additional description: self-portrait rice paper 7" x 9" colored inks none between entry for April 7 and April 19, 1843. That "none" looks really weird there. Also, consider this one: 340 ##$dhandwritten$dtyped. Additional description: handwritten typed That just sounds like nonsense.
That makes me think maybe we'd want to have 2 levels of labels: Physical medium: Information recording technique: handwritten typed Dimensions: 20 cm. folded to 10 x 12cm Color content: black and white Layout: double sided With the MARC 300 "records formulated following cataloging rules based on International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) principles, a relationship exists between prescribed ISBD punctuation and the identification of specific subfield data." But with MARC 340 there is no punctuation to help identify the specific subfield data. Perhaps we could provide our own punctuation to separate subfields, but the order of subfields still makes no sense. 340 ##$aglass$b45 x 15 ft.$dembedded$elead$hcenter panel. Additional description: glass 45 x 15 ft. embedded lead center panel. I think we have to have the contextual labels... although the labels given by MARC are librarian friendly and not end-user friendly really... -- I'm a bit stuck with this one.