More About Phrase Indexes

A phrase index is created from a specified string of text in a variable-length field. A phrase index will include the entirety of the MARC field's specified subfields in a single index entry, in the order in which they appear.

Phrase indexes are given a one-letter abbreviation known as an "index tag." Index tags and field group tags are not the same thing.

Here are the standard system phrase indexes:

Index Tag Index Name Type of Record
a Author Bibliographic and authority
b Barcode Item and patron
c Call no. Bibliographic, item and holdings
d Subject Bibliographic and authority
g Gov't Doc no. Bibliographic and item
i Standard no. Bibliographic
k Titlekey Bibliographic, built on the first seven words of the title; used to find duplicates when keying new records
m Resource subject Resource; used in the ERM module
n Name Patron
o Control no. Bibliographic
p Prof/TA Course
r Course Course
t Title Bibliographic and authority
u Unique ID Patron
w or x Keyword Bibiliographic, authority, holdings, order, vendor, invoice, resource, contact
y Resource title Resource; used in the ERM module
z ARN Authority

For more about these indexes, see:

The Heading Indexes: Author, Subject, and Title

The author, subject, and title indexes are called "heading" indexes - each index entry consists of an entire heading, not individual words. When searching one of these indexes, the words used in the search statement must be entered in the order in which they appear in the entry in the index. For example, a title search for "lady portrait" would not retrieve the record for Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady".

Initial Articles in Titles

Initial articles in titles (as defined in MARC 21 records by the value of the second indicator in the 245 field) are not indexed in the title index. Although punctuation marks are usually not included in the title and subject indexes, the library may choose to include certain ones, such as the '#' character which might appear in titles to indicate the musical "sharp" (e.g., Quartet in C# Minor) or the '+' character which might appear in the title or subject entry for a book on the topic of C++ programming.

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard author index are:

Standard Author Index
MARC Tag Indicator Subfields
100 all abcdq
110 all abcd
111 all acdegq
400 2nd ind. = 0 abcd
410 2nd ind. = 0 abcde
411 2nd ind. = 0 acdegq
700 all abcdq
710 all abcde
711 all acdegq
800 all abcdeq
810 all abcde
811 all acdegq

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard subject index are:

Standard Subject Index
MARC Tag 2nd Indicator Subfields
600 0 and blank all
610 0 and blank all
630 0 and blank all
650 0 and blank all
651 0 and blank all
690 0 and blank all
691 0 and blank all

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard title index are:

Standard Title Index
MARC Tag Indicator Subfields
100 all fglnoprstv
110 all fkloprstv
111 all fklpstv
130 all all but h
210 all all
211 all all
212 all all
214 all all
240 all all but h
245 all all but h, c
246 all all but h
247 all all but h
400 2nd ind. = 0 tpv
410 2nd ind. = 0 tpv
411 2nd ind. = 0 tpv
440 all all but x
700 all fglmnoprstv
710 all fklmoprstv
711 all fklpstv
730 all all but h, x
740 all all but h, x
800 all fglmnoprstv
810 all fklmoprstv
811 all fklpstv
830 all but h all

The Keyword Index: Title Sort Keys

Title Keys

The title sort key is sometimes referred to as simply the title key. The system uses a similar, though not identical, key for duplicate checking. This latter key is the title duplication key and its use is described in Duplicate Checking.

Each entry in the keyword index is assigned a seven-character title sort key, which is used to determine the order in which records appear in a record browse screen when searching the keyword index and the display is sorted by title. In such a display, the order in which the records appear is determined by the alphabetic order of the records' title sort keys. See Advanced Searching: Ranking Options for more information on the sort order of record browse displays.

The system derives the title sort key from the first subfield of the first Title field in the record by:

  1. Normalizing the Title field by removing non-filing words and replacing punctuation characters with spaces.
  2. Mapping any non-CJK or Thai braced diacritics to the form in which they are indexed.
  3. Taking the first five letters of the first word. If there are fewer than five letters in the first word, the system adds spaces at the end to fill it to five characters.
  4. Appending the first letter of the second and third words. If the title has only one or two words, spaces are used instead.

Some examples are:

Title Sort Key Examples
Title Field Title Sort Key
|aHandbook of clinical laboratory data.|cCo-editors: Willard R. Faulkner, John W. King [and] Henry C. Damm. handboc
|aDas opernbuch :|bein f{u00FC}hrer durch den opernef
|aNon-dispersive infra-red gas analysis|bin science, medicine, and industry|c[by] D. W. Hill [and] T. Powell. non di
|aPhotosynthesis|c[by] G.E. Fogg. photo
|aA-Z of astronomy a zo
|a1001 questions answered about astronomy. 1001 qa
|aA la m{u00E9}moire de Paul d'Estournelles a    lm
|aPr{u00E9}cis de m{u00E9}canique rationnelle precidm
|aLes {u00C9}tats-Unis et la France etatsue

Titles that consist entirely of braced diacritics, including those encoding CJK or Thai characters, are usually displayed in RightResult order. Sorting on title is not recommended.

The Titlekey Index: Title Duplication Keys

The title duplication key is formed from the first letter of each of the first seven words of the normalized form of the field.

If the field does not contain seven words, the key is padded with letters from the last word.

If there are not enough letters in the last word, asterisks are used to complete the key.

Initial articles (a, an, the) are excluded on the basis of the SKIP field in each bibliographic record.

When forming the title duplication key, the system eliminates subtitles and series numbering from the key by stopping at colons, semicolons, and SPACE-slashes (e.g., " /").

Any non-CJK or Thai braced diacritics are mapped to the form in which they are indexed .

Only the first 49 characters of the field are used in the formation of the title duplication key, and only alphabetic characters are used. Ampersands are treated as the word "and".

Some examples are:

Title Duplication Key Examples
Title/Series Field Title Duplicate Key
The rise and fall of the Roman Empire rafotre
Gone with the wind gwtwind
Newsweek newswee
River run rrun***
War within : from victorian to modernist thought wwithin
McGraw Hill series in Speech; 36 mhsispe
Sportparent / American Sport Education Program sportpa
Träumen (entered as Tr{u00E4}umen) traumen

If a title or series entirely consists of braced diacritics encoding CJK or Thai characters, no title duplication key is constructed, but a search is conducted on the entire title. For titles encoded for other character sets, no meaningful title duplication key can be constructed, so duplication checking is not supported.

The Subject Index: Rotating Subject Headings

Subject headings can be "rotated". This means that a heading can be retrieved by matching on any of the following subdivisions: title of work ('t'), general subdivision ('x'), period subdivision ('y'), or place subdivision ('z'). This is true as long as the first character entered into one of these subdivisions is not a number. For example, the heading

6510 SOCIETY OF FRIENDS|yCIVIL WAR, 1861-1865|zPENNSYLVANIA

will be rotated to both:

PENNSYLVANIA--SOCIETY OF FRIENDS--CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

and

CIVIL WAR 1861-1865--SOCIETY OF FRIENDS--PENNSYLVANIA

Thus, this heading can be retrieved by entering "Society" or "Pennsylvania" or "Civil War". If the period subdivision (subfield y) in the above heading had been "|y1861-1865", then that subdivision would not have been rotated, since subdivisions are not rotated if the first character is a number. In that case, the heading would have been retrievable by entering "Society" or "Pennsylvania", but not "1861-1865."

The advantage to rotated indexing of subjects is that it allows library staff to take full advantage of the global update function (which can do batch updating of rotated headings).

Certain subject subheadings occur so frequently that they are not helpful as access points and these subheadings are not rotated. An alphabetical listing of these headings is provided.

To ensure rotated subject headings work on your system, do not use a BROWSE_d Web option.

Subject Headings Not Rotated in the Subject Index
Any subheading beginning with a number (0 through 9), plus the following:
abstracts exhibitions personal narratives
addresses essays lectures experiments pictorial works
adverse effects facsimiles poetry
analysis fiction politics and government
anniversaries field work popular works
art finance prevention and control
atlases government policy problems exercises etc
audiovisual kits guide books psychological aspects
bibliography handbooks quotations maxims etc
bio bibliography handbooks manuals etc relations
biography history research
case studies history and criticism scores
catalogs indexes scores and parts
catalogs and collections interviews slides
chartbook juvenile literature social aspects
charts knowledge social conditions
charts diagrams etc laboratory manuals social life and customs
chronology large type books societies etc
collected works law and legislation sound recordings
congresses law and regulation sources
correspondence laws statues etc standards
criticism lectures statistics
criticism and interpretation legal status laws etc study and teaching
description manuscripts study and teaching higher
description and travel methods study and teaching secondary
dictionaries microfiche tables
dictionaries and encyclopedias microfilm technique
directories miscellanea terminology
doctrinal and controversial works mystery and detective stories testing
doctrines officials and employees trends
early works to organization and administration united states
essays outlines videocassettes
evaluation outlines syllabi etc views
examination questions periodicals vocational guidance
examination questions etc periodicals societies etc yearbooks

Number Indexes

Call Number Index

During record loading, the system chooses a single call number from each record (from among all the call numbers in the record) and stores it in the call number field. Your library can specify which fields the system should check, and the order in which it should check them, to extract the call number to use.

You can extract call numbers from different fields for different library collections based on the library holding symbol. You can edit the Holding Symbol file with Advanced System Access & Administration. See Holding Symbol for more information.

The resulting call number field may be indexed using one of the following:

Before indexing, the data in the call number field is normalized.

The LC classification logic allows the system to keep a call number index for LC call numbers in true shelflist order with Cutter numbers always in a specified position. If your library always uses LC call numbers, you should select the LC classification logic. Dewey, SUDOCS, and NLM logic order the call number index based on the intricacies of those classification schemes.

A library which uses call numbers from different classification schemes can choose to have multiple call number indexes. In such a case, when a call number is entered in a record, the system determines which indexing scheme to use based on the MARC tag of the call number field.

Government Docs Number Index

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard SUDOCS index are:

Standard SUDOCS Index
MARC Tag Indicator Subfields
086 all a

Standard Number Index

Your library can choose to index ISBN and ISSN without punctuation, e.g., the ISSN 0148-8759 would be indexed as 01488759 and could be retrieved by searching for "01488759" or "0148-8579" or "0148 8759".

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard ISBN/ISSN index are:

Standard ISBN/ISSN Index
MARC Tag Indicator Subfields
020 all a
022 all a
028 all all

Bib Utility or Control Number Index

The recommended fields and subfields to be included in the standard OCLC # index are:

Standard OCLC # Index
MARC Tag Indicator Subfields
001 n/a all
See also:
Call Number Normalization
Editing Index Labels