Contents notes

The rules on this page have been approved in concept by the SCRAP committee, but the exact wording is still being adjusted. Please use these rules. Please send any feedback to SCRAP.

Contents notes (field 505) provide additional access to material contained inside books or sound recordings. Catalogers are recommended, but not required, to use enhanced contents notes. See Bibliographic Standards and Formats for examples. If you are adding or enhancing a contents note in the CCS database, it is also good practice to do the same with the OCLC record in Connexion, to benefit users internationally. OCLC users with Full cataloging authorization are able to do this without Enhance authorization.

Rules

1. Contents notes are required (across all formats) for the following:
1. Short stories
2. Plays
3. Literary collections (two or more forms of literature)
4. Fairy tales
5. Songs
6. Supreme Court cases
7. Collective biographies
2. Contents notes are not required for the following:
1. Poetry
2. Speeches (EXCEPTION: Representative American Speeches)
3. Essays (EXCEPTION: Best American Essays)
4. Excerpts
5. Complete works
6. Myths
7. Fake-books (Type of score)
8. Encyclopedic reference works
9. Miscellaneous writings— quotations, letters, anecdotes
10. Chapter headings

Special considerations

Serial titles new to the CCS database that:

• Fall into category A or the exceptions to category B
• Have fewer than 100 items per volume to list in a contents note
• Are published less often than quarterly

should be cataloged as monographs with contents notes. Changed serial titles requiring new records in the CCS database are considered "new" titles. Imported records must comply with these guidelines.

Procedures

Complete contents notes (first indicator "0") are required for works containing up to 100 titles, but are optional for works with more than 100 titles.

Indexing

Basic contents notes are indexed only in the general keyword index.

Enhanced contents notes are indexed in both the general keyword index and in the appropriate specific keyword indexes: ‡t in the title keyword index and ‡r in the author keyword index.

References

See AACR2 Revised edition for further explanation of contents notes for each format.

1. Books (2.7B18)
2. Sound recording (6.7B18)
3. Scores (5.7B18) (OMIT FAKE-BOOKS)
4. Videocassettes (8.7B18)
5. Computer software (9.7B18)
6. Serials (12.7B18)