Cataloging: Creating Brief Bibs for Gov Doc Serials
Purpose: To provide a basic record for Government Document.
For each new record:
- Click “New” button
- Dialog boxes will open to guide you through each of the necessary fields:
- CAT DATE: Today’s date
- y MARC: 074 __
- y MARC: 086 __
- t TITLE: 245 00 Enter the title from the slip.
- Use headline capitalization.
- If the title begins with an article (a, an, the) the second zero in the MARC tag needs to be changed so that the article will be ignored in searches. It should be changed to the number of characters, including spaces, that should be skipped.
If title begins with MARC tag will be A 245 02 An 245 03 The 245 04 - The title will be compared to existing titles in URSUS. If a matching or similar title is found, a window will open showing potential duplicates. Close this window to continue.
- p PUBLISHER: 266 _1
- If you are not absolutely sure about the publisher’s location, leave the [Washington, D.C.?] string as is. If you do know the location, enter it and remove the brackets and question mark.
- |b Should contain the name of the governmental unit publishing the item and the names of the higher levels of the administrative structure. These are listed beginning with the highest authority (usually a cabinet-level department) descending to the unit producing the material. The names of cabinet-level departments are formatted as “U.S. Dept. of Defense” rather than “Defense Department.” Lower-level offices and bureaus are listed as “Office of _____” or “Bureau of _____.” Research units or laboratories with specific names are listed by name (“Jet Propulsion Laboratory”)
- f FREQUENCY: 310 __ Irregular
“Irregular” is usually most appropriate. The other most common frequency for these materials is “Annual.” Annual should only be used if all parts are truly annual. Annual reports are annual, but a record for all departmental reports including annual reports and other reports of varying frequency should be listed as Irregular. - *d SUBJECT: 610 10 United States. |b Dept. of Agriculture
OR 610 20 National Institute of Corrections (U.S.) - *b ALT AUTHOR: 710 1_ United States. |b Dept. of Agriculture
OR 710 2_ National Institute of Corrections (U.S.) - r PHYS DESCR: 300 __ v.
- Review record for typos
- Click “Verify” button – “X” beside a field indicates there is probably a problem with the field; otherwise, it is probably O.K. If you are unsure you can go to the Tools menu and choose “Explain Verification Codes.” This gives a very general explanation of what each code means.
- Save the record.
- Write new Bibliographic record number on the bottom of the slip.
* For several of these steps it will be useful to have another record open in URSUS for comparison and/or for copying and pasting. Searching by the 086 field in URSUS will find full records for items published by the same entity. Often the records will be for the individual items you have in hand. These records are especially useful for fields 260, 610, and 710.
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