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Creating Pre-Cats for Non-English Materials

The same core requirements for an English language material pre-cat applies to pre-cats for foreign language materials. See Creating a Pre-cat on the support site.  

In the fixed fields, the only field to be edited is the fiction/non-fiction facet with the numerical values of 0=nonfiction and 1=fiction.

The fiction/nonfiction facet applies ONLY to the following formats:

  • Books and other non-serial print materials
  • Manuscript materials and government documents
  • Audiobooks (including Playaways)
  • Microform/microfiche

Diacritics

To enter diacritics, click on Tools -> Symbol Table or on the keyboard, press ALT+T+S.

From the Select Code Set dropdown menu, please select Diacritics and Symbols:

Choose the character you want to add and click Insert or Insert and Close.  Insert will keep the menu open so you can add more characters.

Note that, for example, if you are entering an acute symbol above a letter, you need to type in the letter first, then select the acute symbol to be inserted.

 

Quite often, the special symbols and diacritics display in WorkFlows as a “square”:

It is no reason for concern as it is the way WorkFlows reads the embedded Unicode. When in doubt, please check the public catalog to see if the title is displaying correctly.

Best Practices - 500, 546, 650 fields

Another option is copying and pasting the information from the publisher’s website, but we advise caution as some characters copied from the Internet do not display correctly in WorkFlows and the catalog.

For titles that are a translation of English titles, please enter a 500 note stating that the item is a translation.

For example, a Polish translation of (enter the English title):

500   Polish translation of: To kill a mockingbird.

Likewise, a record for a title that has been translated into English, needs to have a 500 note stating it. 

For example, a book that has been translated from the Japanese into English: 

500  Translated from the Japanese.

As with any other pre-cat, the more information you enter, the easier it will be for a cataloger to overlay it with the correct record or create an original record, and for other libraries to attach their item.

Remember to enter the correct 590 terminology.

As part of local practices, foreign language materials pre-cats must have a 546 language information tag and a 650 tag (subject heading) with the second indicator “0”:

546     Text in (language of the item).
650 _0  (Language of the item) language materials.

For example:

546     Text in Polish. 
650_0   Polish language materials.
020     9788381254861
100 1   Paris, B.A. 
245 10  Pozwól mi wrócić /|cB. A. Paris ; przełożyła Magdalena Koziej. 
250     MP3 format.
264 1   Warszawa :|bWydawnictwo Albatros,|c2019.
300     1 audio disc (mp3 format) (7 hr., 30 min.) 
500     Translation of : Bring me back.
511     Narrator: Magdalena Szejbal. 
546     Narrated in Polish. 
590     CD MP3
650  0  Polish language materials. 
700 1   Koziej, Magdalena. 
946     SWS/CN/20210726
977     PRE-CAT

Tip: to add a MARC tag to the pre-cat workform, right-click on any tag and select Add Field Before or Add Field After. 

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