Leader - The Easy Stuff First

Last week I covered the basics of the leader. This week I am going to talk about four very straightforward elements of the leader .

05 Record Status (Rec Stat)

This information is system-supplied and cannot be edited. It relates to the encoding level status of the record. In the example below this value is "c" which indicates a record that has been corrected or revised since it was first added to WorldCat.

08 Type of Control (Ctrl)

If this position contains an "a" it means that the material is described according to archival descriptive rules, focusing on the contextual relationships between items and on their provenance rather than on bibliographic detail. Otherwise it will be blank, as it is in the example below.

17 Encoding Level (Elvl)

This code in this position indicates the fullness of the bibliographic information included in the record. In records created since 2020 this is most often either a blank (for a complete record); a 7 for a minimal level record; or an 8 for a CIP/prepub record. Other values are allowed, and prior to 2020 there were restrictions on what libraries could use which codes, but blank (as in our example) or 7 are the most common values you will find. 

18 Descriptive Cataloging Form (Desc)

The code in this position indicates what form of descriptive cataloging was used to create the record and whether or not the standard punctuation for that form was included. A value of "a" indicates that the record was created based on AACR2 (as our example was). Standard practice is to use code "i" or "c" for RDA records (with or without including punctuation, respectively).

 

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