n.Computingthe information assigned to a data element in a record, field, or variableBearman 1989c, 519More archivists will appreciate the varieties of such standards and the reasons for adopting standards at the levels of information systems, data structures, data content, and data values.Thibodeau 1990, 95The standards that they employ involve codes to represent the data (data values) and formats in which the codes are entered (data contents).Spindler and Pearce-Moses 1993, 335Our study was designed to prove that patrons have difficulty interpreting five different aspects of MARC AMC catalog records because of the data contents and data values used (or not used) in certain fields or subfields.
Notes
A data value is the content that fills a space in a record. For instance, a database consists of various fields of data, and one of those fields could contain a number that indicates the weight of a particular number. If that number is 8, then that is the data value, though its actual value in the real world depends on whether the weight is being measured in pounds, kilograms, tons, or atomic mass units.
