Definition

Note that contains information that is of interest to other catalogers. Field 936 is used by CONSER members to indicate the reporting of duplicate continuing resource records to OCLC for deletion. CONSER members also record information about the expected date of publication in continuing resource prepublication records and to note conversion of LC-authenticated pre-AACR2 serial records to AACR2.

Until the practice was discontinued in 2012, field 936 had also been used for the OCLC control numbers for parallel records.

Beginning in 2022, field 936 is also used to identify records as having been added to WorldCat via a batch process.

For information on punctuation, see the Punctuation section below.

Under pre-AACR2 cataloging rules, field 936 was used to record the latest issue consulted or to note that no issue was consulted. In early MARC conversion projects, which issues had been used or even whether issues were consulted was not known. Therefore, the designations Unknown and/or INC (issue not consulted) were used. Sometimes in cooperative efforts, title pages were reproduced and sent to a central conversion unit. Resulting records contained the designation surrogate in the 936 field.

Under AACR2 rules, the cataloging is based on the earliest issue. It is assumed that the issue is in hand. Thus, the preceding uses for the field are no longer applicable.

CONSER previously defined field 936 to identify the issue used for cataloging if the issue was something other than the first issue published. Current practice is to enter this information in a note in field 588.

Information regarding the latest issue consulted during the cataloging of a serial was previously recorded in field 936 when this information could not be given elsewhere in the record. Field 936 was used when the latest issue in hand was not the last published or when publication status was unknown.

CONSER had defined subfield ǂa for information regarding the latest issue consulted during the cataloging of a serial. Data was entered in subfield ǂa under the conventions used for recording an issue designation in field 362.

To distinguish this application of field 936 from its previous pre-ACCR2 application, the designation LIC (Latest Issue Consulted) was added following the volume number and the date of the issue. For example, if the data was Volume 1, Number 4, September 1971, the following was entered:

Field 936 had also been used to enter OCLC control numbers for parallel records. Parallel records are those that are for the same manifestation of an item, but cataloged in a different language. The use of subfield ǂa for parallel records was discontinued in mid-2012, and existing occurrences of this type of 936 field were deleted from WorldCat.  For more information, see section 2.6, Language of Cataloging.

As part of its larger project to bring OCLC-MARC into closer alignment with MARC 21, OCLC began work in 2020 to eliminate the OCLC-defined Encoding Levels I, J, K, and M in favor of those values officially defined in MARC 21.

Beginning in mid-2022, OCLC began to convert existing WorldCat records with Encoding Level M to the most appropriate standard MARC 21 Encoding Level value. To preserve the metadata that has historically identified such records as having been added to WorldCat via a batch process (including Data Sync and WCIRU), OCLC began to add field 936 with the designation BATCHLOAD. At a future date, OCLC will retain the standard MARC 21 Encoding Level value and add field 936 with the BATCHLOAD designation to each record added via an automated process.

Do not delete the BATCHLOAD designation when updating the WorldCat record.

1st Indicator

Undefined. The 1st indicator position is undefined and contains a blank.

	Undefined

2nd Indicator

Undefined. The 2nd indicator position is undefined and contains a blank.

	Undefined

Subfields

Punctuation

For records containing punctuation, follow these instructions:

• Precede second and subsequent occurrences of subfield ǂa by a semicolon-space
• Include incidental punctuation needed within any subfields, e.g., commas, periods (following abbreviations or initials), etc.
• Omit the terminal period at the end of the field unless the last word is an abbreviation or initial

For records containing minimal or no punctuation, include incidental punctuation needed within any subfields. Otherwise, omit the punctuation outlined above.

For more information on punctuation, including OCLC policy, see section 2.8, Punctuation.

Indexing

Field 936 is not indexed.

MARC 21

Field 936 is OCLC-defined and therefore not included in MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data.