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Princeton University Order Division Documentation
 
Searching

Notations on Order Recommendations

Preorder Searching
  RLIN verification

RLIN Searching Summary

Search and Order Guidelines
  Procedure
  Collection Manager orders

Searching for Invoices in Acquisitions
  Complex Searching

Searching for Orders in Acquisitions
  Complex Searching

Searching RLIN for Music

Searching Tips

Series Checks in Voyager
  Monographic Series
  View Items
  Appendix A
  Appendix B

Series Checks in Voyager Checklist


Documentation Home

Searching RLIN for Music: The 028 field

Sound recordings, particularly of classical music, often have such generic titles as to make them useless for searching (music catalogers have uniform titles to deal with them.)  If you try a search such as:

fin tw sonata
fin tp violin#
tp greatest hits

you will most likely get an overwhelming number of hits, and probably none of them will be for the item you're looking for.  Either that, or RLIN will crash...

Happily, most music items have numbers assigned to them by their publishers.  Although they aren't standard-format numbers like ISBN and ISSN numbers, they function the same way as access points.  On an order slip, they are sometimes entered under "Series".  In a MARC-format record, they are assigned the 028 field, though some older preliminary records in our local catalog may have them entered in the 440 field.   The 028 field also contains the Publisher name in subfield b.

Some numbers have a letter prefix and/or suffix, which may or may not represent the name of the publisher in abbreviated form:

PRCD 511 (from Priory [i.e. PR] Records)
CD-83395 (from Teldec)
FF 70647
CD EMX 9502

Others have internal spaces or dashes, often ending with 2 (for CDs) or 4 (for cassettes):

82832-2  (a characteristic pattern of Elektra/Atlantic/Nonesuch Records)
435 774-2 (a characteristic pattern of the Polygram family of records)
697 124 060-2

The full name of the publisher is not usually considered to be part of the publisher's number.  For instance, if you see something like:

Shanachie 6013

"Shanachie" is most likely the full name of the publisher, and "6013" the entire publisher's number.  There are, however, some ambiguous situations in which the name of the publisher, being an anagram or

pseudo-anagram, might also serve as a letter prefix (e.g. "CPO", "CRI") When in doubt, drop the prefix and search under the numerical portion only; RLIN allows that (see below) 

The appropriate RLIN search index is:

fin num 3395

In the Z39.50 Builder pulldown menu this corresponds to "Music Publisher or Number". This may be truncated, and generally is best so.  This may also be combined with other search indexes such as:

fin num 3395 and pn novak
fin num 3395 and pub simrock#

The RLIN publisher's number index tolerates a lot of variation.  You will get the same results (if any) from searching:

cpo 999 606-2
999 606-2
9996062

The equivalent index in the Voyager cataloging module is "Identifiers" (under Non-keyword searches).  Voyager is a lot more persnickety.  It will only retrieve publisher's numbers in the exact form by which they were entered in the 028 field, internal spacing and all.

When searching for music items, you will get the most effective hits with publisher's numbers, alone or in combination with other indexes. If you do not have a publisher's number to refer to, an author-title search will be somewhat more effective than author or title alone.  If you must use a title search for something with a suspiciously generic title, here are a few of the most common words from uniform titles that might be used for the tp index in combination with an author search. It is essential in such cases to truncate the title term.

fin pn soandso and tp sonata#
fin pn soandso and tp symphon#
fin pn soandso and tp concert#
fin pn soandso and tp quartet#
fin pn soandso and tp trio#
fin pn soandso and tp song#

Another useful way of searching RLIN is to search for publihser and use the “also” command: for example, to find Teldec classics 4123 004

            Fin pub teldec#/als 028 123

The “also” command searches a string of numbers anywhere in the 028 field.

For a full description, with examples, of the 028 field, see Library of Congress MARC documentation