Best Practice for Use of ISBD Punctuation

Overview

In October 2016, the PCC ISBD and MARC Task Group final report contained recommendations to discontinue use of ISBD punctuation. As of January 2020, PCC libraries now have three options regarding the use of punctuation when newly authenticating records:

Fully punctuate any field when descriptive cataloging form is recorded as "ISBD punctuation included" (leader/18=i)
Omit final punctuation when descriptive cataloging form is recorded as “ISBD punctuation included” (Leader/18=i)
Omit final punctuation and punctuation between subfields when descriptive cataloging form is recorded as "ISBD punctuation omitted" (Leader/18=c)
1. Must follow detailed guidelines at PCC Guidelines for Minimally Punctuated MARC Data

* Exception: For MARC fields in ranges 1xx, 240, 6xx, 7xx, and 8xx, only punctuation that separates access points from relationship designators can be omitted. The punctuation within access points should not be omitted.

Please note:

This policy covers all descriptive fields in bibliographic records (that is, any field that is NOT an access point)
When updating an existing PCC record, catalogers should follow the punctuation pattern already established in that record.
This policy intends to cover the use of punctuation when newly authenticating bibliographic records. (It may be extended in the future to facilitate the work of catalogers or batch processes dealing with legacy PCC records.)

Guidelines

PCC Guidelines for Minimall Punctuated MARC data (v. 1,2) (rev. October 2020)

PCC Guidelines for Minimally Punctuated MARC data (v. 1.1) (rev. March 2020)

PCC Guidelines for Minimally Punctuated MARC Data (Final as of December 2019)

Harvard Issues

Best Practice

Harvard's Metadata Standards Working Group is agnostic about the choice between options 1, 2, or 3 for enhanced or original cataloging. Catalogers should use their judgement about whether or not to institute this change in their records, and discuss any change with their unit. Although LTS is making every effort to minimize the effect of varying approaches in the discovery layer, catalogers working with complex cases (for example, multiple subfields in 300 and 26x; double punctuation for rare materials) should carefully consider the effect this policy would have on access. Catalogers should not, however, change punctuation choices made by other libraries that are in alignment with this policy:

Anyone choosing to use option 3 of Phase 2 should be fully aware of all the requirements of this.
Upon encountering a record with no ISBD punctuation at end of field, do not change the record back to reflect ISBD punctuation choices (i.e., do not engage in cataloging wars)

Display

Locally, the effect on display has been noted, and accommodations have been made to make the appearance of note fields clearer. For Phase 1, spaces were inserted between notes to improve clarity, and as of January 2020, new rules have been put into place to add punctuation to MARC fields in the HOLLIS display for records whose Descriptive Cataloging Form is ISBD punctuation omitted (LDR/18=c).

General

Questions? Please seek out help from your manager or a cataloger well-versed in this procedure

Harvard Library Best Practices