ocm, oca, (OCoLC) prefixes; indexing/searching of 035 field

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 20

Description:
035 fields can have a variety of prefixes, such as:

035 L $$a(OCoLC)123968953
035 L $$aocm123968953
035 L $$a(OCoLC)ocm123968953

How can we best index these fields so users can find them?

Resolution:
The most common practice is to strip off all of the non-numerics for indexing purposes. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use the non_numeric routine in tab_filing. (The 035 index is most commonly defined as a direct index, which uses tab_filing.)

Example:

24 non_numeric

It’s possible that stripping off the institution identifier for searching purposes (the symbol in parentheses) will result in false hits, but this happens very rarely. In the US, at least, the vast majority of 035 numbers represent the system numbers from OCLC and not other institutions.

Note that there is no need to omit the prefixes in tab11_ind; the non_numeric tab_filing line will omit all non-numeric characters. KB 16384-8609 describes a case where this tab11_ind stripping was done unnecessarily.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013