Last edited: January 17, 1989
The purpose of notes (5XX fields) is to provide additional information about the work which is not included in the author, title, edition, imprint, physical description or series fields. Notes can provide additional physical description, credits, contents notes, the presence of bibliographies or index, item or institution specific information, etc.
In creating original cataloging, the Library of Congress and many OCLC contributing libraries (ourselves included) tend to be quite thorough in the provision of note fields. Not all of these notes are equally useful to the public, and the CLSI ETR (Expanded Title Record or "Full" record on CLCAT) only includes two general notes and one local note.
It is not realistic, nor even particularly desirable, to have catalogers evaluate each note field on every record. For serial and nonprint records, especially software, the value of certain types of notes must be checked on a case-by-case basis, e.g. the date and release number of a software release is usually important. We can, however, routinely delete certain notes on monographic records.
Shipping list numbers, stock numbers, report numbers and similar numbers which are not part or a series can be eliminated on all monographic records, regardless of the number of notes. "Biological report. "(Washington) v 82" is probably more meaningful to the general public than "Shipping List no. 88-579P" or "TR EL-82-4." If such numbers are needed for reorder or ILL verification purposes, we can always look up the original record on OCLC.
Likewise, a more detailed date of publication or release is rarely needed for monographs except in the case of rare books or frequent draft or republication dates. For new records, date 2 in the fixed fields now includes the month and date of publication when that is available. Hence such notes as "August 1987" or "861204" can usually be edited out, whereas something on the order of "Draft for Public Review: May, 1978." should generally be included. In case of doubt ask a cataloger.
To return to Index use the 'Go Back' command on your browser.