The CNOC2 Field Galaxy Redshift Survey I: The Survey and the Catalog for the Patch CNOC 0223+00

The Canadian Network for Observational Cosmology (CNOC2) Field Galaxy Redshift Survey is a spectroscopic/photometric survey of faint galaxies over 1.5 square degrees of sky with a nominal spectroscopic limit of R_c=21.5 mag. The primary goals of the survey are to investigate the evolution of galaxy clustering and galaxy populations over the redshift range of approximately 0.1 to 0.6. The survey area contains four widely separated patches on the sky with a total spectroscopic sample of over 6000 redshifts and a photometric sample of over 40,000 galaxies with 5-color photometry. We describe the survey and observational strategies, multi-object spectroscopy mask design procedure, and data reduction techniques for creating the spectroscopic-photometric catalogs. We also discuss the derivations of various statistical weights for the redshift sample which allow it to be used as a complete sample. As the initial release of the survey data, we present the data set and some statistics for the Patch CNOC0223+00.