016 National Bibliographic Agency Control Number

The 016 tag contains the unique numbers assigned to a record by a national bibliographic agency other than the Library of Congress (those are in the 010 tag). This number is a record control number used in a national bibliographic agency system, rather than a number used for an entry in a national bibliography (those are found in the 015 tag). The tag is repeatable, because there are lots of national bibliographic agencies in the world, and each individual number gets its own tag.

There are 3 subfields that you will find in 016 tags:

• subfield a contains the actual control number
• subfield z contains invalid or cancelled control numbers
• subfield 2, if it is present, tells you the source of the control numbers in the other subfields. These can be interpreted using the MARC Code List for Organizations

If you have been following along with #TuesdayTags this structure should be familiar to you as it is the same one used in the 010 and 015 tags. Unlike those tags, the 016 tag does have a defined indicator. 

If the first indicator in the 016 tag is blank that means the source of the number is the Library and Archives Canada. If the first indicator contains a 7 then there will be a subfield 2 present to tell you who assigned the number. The second indicator in the 016 tag is undefined and should always be blank. 

Here is an example from the NHSL collection:

Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763-1801 by Lawrence S. Kaplan

This record includes this tag:

016  _ _   ǂa (AMICUS)000001255194

We can tell from the first indicator that the number was assigned by the Library and Archives Canada (because it is a blank). There are a lot of 016 tags that have (AMICUS) at the start of them. That is because AMICUS was the catalog that Canada's National Library used for a very long time. They have now switched to a catalog they call Aurora. You can use the old numbers to search the new catalog.