Corporate Names--General Information

Definition

A corporate name used as an authorized access point. The access point is assigned according to various cataloging rules to give access to the bibliographic record from corporate names. Corporate names are the names of agencies, associations, businesses, firms, governments, institutions, nonprofit enterprises, performing groups, etc.

A corporate name can appear alone or in conjunction with a subordinate corporate name, a form or subject subheading, and/or a title of a work entered under the name of a jurisdiction or other corporate body. A name of a jurisdiction that represents an ecclesiastical entity is a corporate name.

For information about conference or meeting names entered directly under its own name, see Meeting Names--General Information.

Use for the following types of corporate names:

• Organized bodies entered directly under their own names
• Organized bodies entered indirectly under names of political jurisdictions
• Political jurisdictions standing alone in non-subject access point fields
• Special corporate names, such as names of abbeys, cathedrals, churches, denominations, monasteries, missions, musical groups, parishes, priories, programs, studies, and vessels (e.g., Catholic Church, Dire Straits (Musical group), Monasterio Las Descalzas (Lima, Peru), New York Philharmonic, or Writers' Program)
• Names of conferences, conventions, exhibitions, expeditions, festivals, and meetings entered indirectly, that is, under the name of a corporate body (e.g., Labour Party (Great Britain). Conference)

OCLC also makes available nonstandard MARC fields to use for additional access points not supported by cataloging rules (e.g., donor or gift information or variant form). Enter information in fields 697, 791, 797, or 897 as you would in the corresponding standard MARC fields. These fields are not retained in the WorldCat record. However, they are retained in exported records and records delivered via other services.

This page does not cover the title portion of name/title access points. Refer to the Preferred Titles--General Information for further information on constructing title access points and title related subfields.

For information on punctuation, see the Punctuation section below.

Guidelines

Guidelines and links to guidelines for applying all content designators are given below. A field-specific list of content designators and guidelines for applying the 1st and 2nd indicator position are provided under the description for fields that contain a corporate body.

For current cataloging, construct corporate body access points according to Resource Description and Access (RDA), Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Library of Congress/Program for Cooperative Cataloging (LC/PCC) practice. Search the OCLC Authority File to verify the forms of the authorized access points. Use the current RDA, AACR2, or AACR2-compatible forms of the authorized access points. If an access point is not found, construct the access point according to RDA or AACR2.

For retrospective cataloging, search the OCLC Authority File to verify the forms of the authorized access points. Use the current RDA, AACR2, or AACR2-compatible forms of the authorized access points. If an access point is not found, you may enter the pre-RDA form, but you are encouraged to construct the access point according to RDA or AACR2.

For help in coding ambiguous access points, see the Subject Headings Manual, H 405. Jurisdictions will appear in the authority file in field 151 but when used as descriptive access points they will be coded with an x10 with a 1st indicator 1.

If constructing a corporate body access point according to pre-RDA instructions, make the following modifications:

• Use Department instead of Dept. based on usage of the corporate body
• Retain a frequency word as part of the name of a meeting when the frequency is formally associated with the conference or meeting name
• Spell out the names of months when they appear in the qualifiers for conference or meeting names

1st Indicator

Type of corporate name entry element. Value that identifies the form of the entry element of the field. The values distinguish among an inverted name, a jurisdiction name, and a corporate name in direct order used as the entry element.

2nd Indicator

The definition of the 2nd indicator position is specific to each field.

Undefined. The 2nd indicator position is undefined and contains a blank.

	Undefined

Thesaurus. The thesaurus or established subject terminology used in constructing the subject access point. For more information about subject access points, see 6xx Introduction.

Type of added entry. The values distinguish between no information provided and an analytical entry.

Subfields

Limited examples are given in this section. Refer to each specific field listed in the Input Standards above for more examples.

Punctuation

Punctuation of the subelements of an access point is generally dictated by descriptive cataloging or subject system/thesaurus rules. These input conventions clarify MARC punctuation practices. Fields 110, 610, 710, and 810 may optionally end with terminal punctuation. Terminal punctuation consists of one of the following: ellipsis, hyphen, period, closing parenthesis, exclamation point, and question mark. Currently, the control heading process adds terminal periods to access points. If the final subfields are subfield ǂu, ǂ0, ǂ1, ǂ2, ǂ3, ǂ4, or ǂ5, the terminal punctuation precedes the first instance of those subfields. If the final subfield is ǂe, add a comma after the access point unless the access point ends with an open date. Separate multiple relator terms with commas and add a period after the last subfield ǂe.

A corporate name portion of a name/subordinate body or name/title access point ends with terminal punctuation. When an authorized access point ends with a quotation mark, the terminal punctuation is placed before the quotation mark.

In the case of a corporate name input as a subject access point and followed by a subject subdivision, omit the terminal punctuation following the name unless the name ends with an abbreviation or initial/letter. See also 6xx Introduction for specific subject access point guidelines.

Qualifier elements:

• Enclose a term indicating the type of corporate body or jurisdiction in parentheses
• Enclose the name of a geographic place or jurisdiction in parentheses
• Enclose the name of an institution in parentheses
• Enclose a date or dates associated with the corporate body in parentheses
• Enclose a general designation in parentheses
• Enclose a distinguishing word or phrase in parentheses
• Separate adjacent qualifiers by a space, colon, space
• Separate a term used to distinguish one government from another claiming jurisdiction over the same area and the date or dates associated with that government by a comma and a space

Non-qualifier elements:

• Precede a subheading by a period and a space except when the preceding element ends with a quotation mark
• Enclose the number, date, and location of a conference or an exhibition, etc., in parentheses. Separate the number, date, and location by a space, colon, space. Separate multiple locations by a semicolon.
• Separate multiple relator terms with commas and add a period after the last subfield ǂe

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

Indexing

For indexing and searching information, see Searching WorldCat Indexes: Fields 100-110, Fields 600-610, Fields 700-711, and Fields 8xx.

MARC 21

For more information, including content designator history, see MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data, x10.