377 Associated Language (R)

Definition

Codes for languages associated with the entity described in the record. Includes the language a person uses when writing for publication, broadcasting, etc., a language a corporate body uses in its communications, a language of a family, or a language in which a work is expressed.

For information on punctuation, see the Punctuation section below.

Guidelines

If the Bibliographic format is used to represent a work or expression with no manifestation information, follow these guidelines to use field 377 in relation to fixed field element Lang, field 041, and field 546:

Lang. The fixed field element Lang supports primarily machine indexing of the language of the resource for user tasks to find and select. Always supply Lang for a resource/manifestation or an expression. Do not supply if the record is for a work.

041. Supply field 041 as needed and as applicable in bibliographic records for the manifestation only. Do not use if the record is for a work or expression.

546. Use field 546 to record textual information about language in bibliographic records for the manifestation or expression. Do not use if the record is for a work.

377. When the resource description is for an expression, field 377 can be supplied even when one field 377 duplicates the language information in subfield ǂl in the preferred access point. In an expression description, Lang and field 546 may also contain language information.

1st Indicator

Undefined. The 1st indicator position is undefined and contains a blank.

2nd Indicator

Source of code

Subfields

Punctuation

For records containing or omitting punctuation, follow these instructions:

• Include incidental punctuation needed within any subfields, e.g., commas, periods (following abbreviations or initials), etc.
• Omit punctuation preceding each subfield unless the preceding subfield ends with an ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, period (following an abbreviation or initial), question mark, closing bracket, or closing parenthesis
• Omit the terminal period at the end of the field unless the last word is an abbreviation or initial

For more information on punctuation, including OCLC policy, see section 2.8, Punctuation.

Indexing

For indexing and searching information, see Searching WorldCat Indexes, field 377.

MARC 21

For more information, including content designator history, see MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data, field 377.