Tip of the Week

Tip for: 12.12.2005

What Tag or Subfield Does That Information go in?

Summary: The majority of you are likely familiar with MARC tags and subfields and what information belongs in each one. Alexandria has been designed to make it easy to catalog items whether you understand MARC tags and subfields or not. However, it is important to have a basic understanding of tags and subfields to make sure that information is cataloged appropriately, so your patrons can easily find what they are looking for. But where can you go to find information about what each tag and subfield represents, if you don't already know?

Hopefully, you are already familiar with the Library of Congress website. For those of you who are not, this tip will show you where you can go to find information regarding what each tag and subfield represent and examples of how each is used. The MARC Concise Format and MARC LITE formats basically offer the same information, however, the Concise Format may offer additional fields.

To get to the Library of Congress' MARC webpage:

Open up your web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape, etc).

Go to http://www.loc.gov/marc.

Click on Bibliographic under the MARC Concise Format or MARC LITE options on the left-hand side of the page.

Use the links on the Table of Contents to select the portion of the MARC information you would like to view more information about.

Use links from the resulting page to view specific tag information.

Another useful tool for cataloging specifically in Alexandria is the Cataloging Made Easy file available from the Alexandria Help index.

To access Cataloging Made Easy:

Select Alexandria Help from the Help drop-down menu.

Scroll down through the Help Index to the Items portion.

Click on the Cataloging Made Easy link.

View the step - by - step guide to the Item window and cataloging within Alexandria.

Realizing that some of you may be away the next couple of weeks for your Winter break, this will be the last tip until the first week of the coming year. We wish you a joyous holiday season.

Thank you,

The Alexandria Staff Librarians

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