Access Point	MARC fields
Personal name	100,400,600,700,800
Corporate name	110,410,610,710,810
Conference or meeting	111,411,611,711,811
Geographic name	651,652,752

Disregard initial articles at the beginning of corporate name headings other than those beginning with personal and place names."

Access Point	MARC fields	MARC subfields
Uniform title	130,240,243,630,730,830	$a
Romanized title	241	$a
Translation of title by cataloging agency	242	$a
Title	245	$a
Topical subject	650	$a
Title traced differently	740, [246*]	$a
Series added entry title	440,840	$a
Title in name/title entry	XXX	$t

[* The 246 field became available after the ALA filing rules were published. - Judith Hopkins]

Appendix 2 lists definite and indefinite articles in frequently encountered languages in the nominative case only (all genders both singular and plural), which should be disregarded whenever they occur as the initial word of a title or topical subject heading. In languages having an indefinite article, the word or words representing the cardinal numeral one also are given whenever the same form is used. An initial numeral, whether used as a noun or an adjective, must always be regarded in filing."

SUMMARY

INDEFINITE ARTICLES:

LISTS OF ARTICLES:

USMARC PROVISIONS:

The USMARC formats provide for two ways in which to indicate that an initial article is to be ignored in filing:
1. Use of a non-filing indicator. A non-filing indicator is a value from 1 to 9 that indicates the number of character positions associated with an initial definite or indefinite article at the beginning of the field which is to be disregarded in sorting, filing, and indexing; or
2. Omission of the initial article from the text of the field.

   The following fields in the Bibliographic format contain a non-filing indicator

   TAG	FIELD NAME	INDICATOR POSITION
   130	Main entry - Uniform title	First
   222	Key title	Second
   240	Uniform title	Second
   242	Translation of title by cataloging agency	Second
   243	Collective Uniform title	Second
   245	Title statement	Second
   440	Series statement/added entry - Title	Second
   630	Subject added entry - Uniform title	First
   730	Added entry - Uniform title	First
   740	Added entry - Uncontrolled related/analytical title	First
   830	Series added entry - Uniform title	Second

   The following fields in the Authorities format contain a non-filing indicator

   TAG	FIELD NAME	INDICATOR POSITION
   130	Heading - Uniform title	Second
   430	See From Tracing - Uniform title	Second
   530	See Also From Tracing - Uniform title	Second

   With the above fields the correct use of the non-filing indicator permits the initial article to be included in the text of the field but to be ignored in indexing. The value to be input is based on a count of the number of characters in the initial article plus one for the space between the article and the subsequent word. If the article or the subsequent word is preceded by a special character such as a quotation mark, a dash, or a diacritic, the space occupied by those special characters must also be counted.

   Examples:
   

   TAG	INDICATORS	TEXT OF FIELD
   245	13	Le jour
   245	14	The start of the exercise
   245	15	"The start of the exercise"
   245	16	--the start of the exercise

   The absence of an initial article indicator at the beginning of other fields or at the beginning of subfields other than the initial one for that field (usually |a) must be dealt with by explicitly omitting the initial article. The chief fields and subfields in which this problem occurs are:

   TAG	DESCRIPTION
   X10	Corporate name fields that do not begin with a personal or a place name
   246	Varying form of title. Applies only to subfield a and subfield p whether or not they are the first subfields of the record
   XXX	Subfield t (Title of work) or subfield p (Name of part/section of a work)

   PROCEDURE (to be used in staff mode only)

   • Log into your NOTIS technical services account.

   • At the home position key in the NOTIS Transaction code (the 4 character code consisting of LT [for Library Technical services] plus the two character Processing Unit code, e.g., GL [General Libraries], thus LTGL or LTHL or LTLL or LTML or LTPL

   • Key in your search string which consists of the command, the index to be searched, and the article to be searched for, with optionally, additional characters which need to be present in the retrieved list, e.g. find jx the or FIND JX THE, where FIND is the command to be used, and JX specifies the index
     

     INDEX CODE	TYPE OF INDEX
     JX	all indexes
     JT	title indexes
     JS	subject indexes
     JA	author indexes

     THE specifies the article to be searched; BE SURE TO FOLLOW IT WITH A BLANK SPACE TO AVOID RETRIEVING LONGER WORDS THAT START WITH THAT CHARACTER STRING, e.g., THEATRE
     If that search retrieves a very large number of records it is usually more convenient to break up the file in one of two ways:

     1. restrict the search to one of the more specialized indexes, realizing you will have to later go back and apply the others.
        The results of a JT search may be almost as long as a JX one; JS is good for finding 6XX fields with a subfield t; JA will not be very productive, with only a few corporate names being retrieved that begin with the article being searched; or,
     2. restrict the search to more limited character strings, e.g., THE A, THE B, THE C, etc., e.g., FIND JX THE A will retrieve: The airs ..., The apes..., etc. Do NOT leave a blank space after the individualizing letter.

     Here is a partial list of records retrieved from a FIND JX THE A search:

     THE ALABAMA STUDENT
      7   .MEDICAL REPORTS OF JOHN Y BASSETT M D THE AL <1941> (HL 700) 
     
     THE AND THAT AS CLAUSE CONNECTIVES IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH WITH ESPECIAL CONSIDERATION OF THE EMERGENCE OF THE PLEONAS
      8   .KIVIMAA KIRSTI <1967> (GL 245)
     
      THE AU DUONG 1945
      9           *ESTABLISHED HEADING  (GL 100 cab)
     10   .CHINESISCHE MINDERHEIT IN VIETNAM ALS ELEMEN <1979> (GL 100)
     
        THE AU HAREM DARCHI AHMED ROMAN
     11   .CHAREF MEHDI <1983> (GL 245)
     

     The first line will display the contents of the field that generated the output.

     The next line (preceded by an item number) gives the main entry of that record, followed by the work's publication date (in angled brackets) and the code for the Processing unit that cataloged that item plus the MARC tag of the field in the first line (in parentheses). You can only change the records for works done by your own processing unit. (Some people have authorization number that apply to multiple processing units, but even so they have to start with the transaction code for the other units to work with their records)

     You will call up the full bibliographic record for each item in your processing unit. (In the following analysis I am including one that is not from my processing unit but in practice you would ignore it, or, if you are authorized for the other unit, after you have finished correcting the records for your own unit, key in the transaction code of the other unit and repeat the search).

     7. The Alabama Student. The initial "the" IS an article. The record is in HSL so only a staff member with authorization for HSL can correct this. The heading is correctly tagged as 700 as the phrase is a sobriquet for Dr. Bassett, but since there is no initial article indicator provided in a 700 field, HSL will have to remove the word "The" so that the record can index under the heading: Alabama Student.

     If this record were from my processing unit I would go to the 700 field and delete the "The " so that the 700 field now read: Alabama student. If necessary I would correct the capitalization of the new first word.

     8. The and that as clause connectives .... This initial "the" is NOT an article; it is the name of the linguistic element that is the subject of this work. The 245 field correctly has a second indicator of zero, indicating that no characters at the beginning of this field are to be ignored in indexing. Do not change anything.

     9. The, Au Doung, 1945- This initial "the" is NOT an article, it is a Vietnamese surname. Do not change anything.

     10. Examination of record 10 shows the following 245 field:
     245:13:|a Le thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed : |b roman / |c Mehdi Charef.
     It reveals that here the word "the" is NOT an English article, in fact it is a French noun (meaning TEA) which was preceded by the French article "le" which was correctly designated to be ignored by the second indicator of 3, the two characters of the word "le" followed by a blank space. Do not change anything.

     If I had also retrieved a record in my processing unit such as:
     245:10: |a The airs above the ground.
     I would change the second indicator to 4 (three characters for "the" and one for a blank space), thus ending with:
     245:14: |a The airs above the ground.

     Repeat the above process for all articles in the nominative case found in Appendix 2 of ALA.
     

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     This page has been accessed times since 22 September 1997.

     Created 22 September 1997; Revised 10 October 1997