Instruction Sheet for Foreign Language Bibliographic Records

Prepared by HUL Standing Subcommittee on Bibliographic Standards and Policy

The following instructions are to be used in conjunction with section 3.12 of the Harvard University Library Bibliographic Standards and are intended to provide more details about working with specific types of foreign language bibliographic records. That section of the Standards reads as follows:

3.12 Foreign Language Bibliographic Records

As an exception to the requirement in 3.3 above of following the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) in its current edition, foreign language bibliographic records may be brought into HOLLIS without changing to English the language of the descriptive cataloging (for example, the language of the physical description or of non-quoted notes), although English language cataloging is preferred. In all cases, descriptive access points must be formulated according to AACR; subject heading practice must correspond with the requirements of encoding levels used; and subject added entries in foreign languages must be coded to specify the subject heading system, thesaurus, or authority file used to assign them.

OCLC Foreign Language Records for Monographs

1. If more than one OCLC “parallel” record[1] exists, and one is an English language record, catalog in Aleph using the English record.

2. If no English language record exists, a foreign language parallel record may be imported from OCLC into Aleph according to the following guidelines:

a. It is preferred that the record be transformed into an English language record and coded “a” (AACR2) in Leader byte 18 (Descriptive cataloging form) as appropriate.

When changing a non-English record to an English record, remove the 035 and 040 fields[2] and do not add a 936 field. (Aleph does not accept 936 fields in any case. The Subcommittee has asked OIS to look into automatically stripping the 936 from incoming OCLC records. Apparently this is already done for incoming CONSER records. It is consistent to remove it from all records.)

b. Optionally, catalogers may instead retain the non-English descriptive fields (for example, the physical description in the 300 field and non-quoted note fields) as they appear in the foreign language record. The Descriptive cataloging form in the Leader byte 18 must be coded “i” (ISBD).

Monograph Records Brought into Aleph Using Z39.50

When using foreign language catalog records brought into Aleph using Z39.50, these guidelines apply:

1. It is preferred that the record be transformed into an English language record and coded “a” (AACR2) in Leader byte 18 (Descriptive cataloging form) as appropriate.

2. Optionally, catalogers may instead retain the non-English descriptive fields (for example, the physical description in the 300 field and non-quoted note fields) as they appear in the foreign language record. The Descriptive cataloging form in the Leader byte 18 must be coded “i” (ISBD). The code for the language of cataloging must be added to 040 subfield b if it is not already present for export to OCLC.

When using foreign language records brought into Aleph using Z39.50, check for the following:

·  Correct use of MARC fields (according to MARC21)

·  Correct characters (Unicode 8 with combined characters)

·  Romanization that follows ALA-LC Romanization Tables

Serials

The language of the CONSER database is English.

Exceptionally, the National Library of Canada creates two separate records, one in English and one in French, for bilingual serials (i.e., serials that contain substantive portions of text in English and French). The French language records created thereby are not used by CONSER participants, who are required to input another record with note fields, etc., in English. For more details, consult section C12.3.1 of the CONSER Editing Guide.

1

[1] See OCLC’s Technical Bulletin 250 for details about parallel records: <http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/worldcat/tb/250/>).

[2] When changing a non-English record to an English record when the non-English record was originally claimed for your or another Harvard unit during RECON, there is no need to delete Harvard’s holdings from the non-English record in OCLC.