338 - Carrier Type

 This is yet another tag that came into the MARC record as part of RDA. 

According to BF&S Carrier Type "reflects the format of the storage medium and housing of a carrier in combination with the media type ... enables indication of more specific carrier types and carrier types from various lists."

Subfield a of the 338 can only contain terms that are part of the RDA Carrier Type list. As with the 334 tag, some of the terms on the list are "published" (and thus, usable) and others are "deprecated" (no longer to be used).

Subfield b contains a Carrier Type Code from the Term and Code List for RDA Carrier Types. The various RDA types that we have looked at this month all include a code in subfield b in their definitions, but this is the first one we have seen that had a set of terms defined for it. The other tags have the subfield defined as a place-holder for code lists that may be defined in the future.

Subfield 2 contains the "Source of term" code, which will be rdacarrier. This term, as was the case with all subfield 2s in the tags we covered this month, is the MARC code that identifies the source of the term or code used to record the content type information from the Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes list. 

If a work includes pieces of multiple carrier types they go into separate 338 tags--a concert recording on CD with a DVD of the actual concert included in the package, for example.