A Good Record in Evergreen

A “good” bibliographic record allows any patron in any library to quickly and easily find accurate information about that item.  A good record is accurate and complete. You should pay particular attention to these fields.

1. In the “Fixed Fields” table, you should especially review these fields:

• Type – books should be “a”, DVD’s should be “g”, etc.
• Form – large print items should be “d”, etc.
• Audn – children’s books should be “a”, “b”, “c”, “d”, etc.
• Date1 – should be the copyright date (or publication date) as shown in the 260(c) field.

If you are not sure about an entry in a particular fixed field, right-click on the field. Available choices appear:

You can find a lot more information on fixed fields and their possible values at OCLC Fixed Field

2. The 100(a) field should have the author’s name
3. The 245(a) field should have the Title
4. The 260 field should have publishing information
5. The 300 field should have physical description information

These are minimum standards. Better records have notes, subjects and series information.   If the record you are looking at is not up to these standards, it should be edited or overlaid with a better record.

For more extensive information on fields, subfields and what should be in them see OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards