Cataloguing titles, entering bibliographic descriptions

The cataloguing grid consists of several pages. The first page contains the Bibliographic Description fields, the entry of which is standardized by international rules that are mentioned below in a highly simplified form.

Authors field

This field is intended to contain the names of the document's authors. Each author must be entered on a separate line.

The author's form is as follows: Last name, First name (e.g. Jones, Camilla).

BiblioMaker manages an index of authors previously entered in the database. To avoid input errors, we recommend that you enter only the first few letters of the author's surname, so that the program displays similar authors already registered. So, if you enter Jon, the program displays a selection window containing all authors whose surname begins with Jon. If you find the desired author in the list, the program copies the author's full name into the Authors field. If, on the other hand, the author is not found, the program will suggest that you add him/her to the index.

It is customary to enter only up to three authors, on the assumption that for a document with more than three authors, readers will search for the document using another criterion such as the title.

To the right of the authors area, a second column allows you to indicate the nature of the author's collaboration (preface, translation, illustration, etc.). Simply click on a cell in the column to select the desired value. If the author is the main author, you can leave this value blank.

Secondary Entries field

This section (available only in the PRO version of the software) is used to enter other document authors. The same rules apply as for the Author field.

Title field

This field contains the document title.

Punctuation in this field is standardized:

Title : remainder of title = title in another language (for multilingual documents) / Responsibility reference (document's authors)

Examples :

A nice day : a hero's history = Une belle journée : Histoire d'un héros / Peter Frampton ; ill. by Joan Hummington

Laura's first adventure / Paul McDougall

Sort Title field

This section is intended for sorting documents by title. According to common practice, documents are sorted by the first significant word in the title, which excludes initial articles (the, a, for, etc.). This is why the sort title is automatically generated without this article.

Edition field

This field contains the document edition (and not the publisher).

Example : 2nd edition

Special Zone field

This field (available only in the PRO version of BiblioMaker) is used only for certain specific types of document, such as maps (map scale) or periodicals (periodicity).

Examples : 1:50'000 or Monthly

Imprint field

This field contains the name of the publisher, preceded by the location of its head office, and the year in which the document was published. The year is automatically copied into the Published year field.

Standard punctuation is as follows: Locality : Publisher, Year of publication

Example : London : Penguin Books, 2024

Collation field

This field contains the physical description of the document.

Standard punctuation is as follows: Number of pages : presence of illustrations ; rounded height in centimeters + accompanying material

Examples :

312 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm + 1 DVD

240 pages ; 24 cm (this document has no illustration and has no accompanying material)

Series field

This field contains the series which the document belongs to.

When you enter a series for the first time, a dedicated grid is displayed, containing the series Title, its ISSN, the title of any Section and its ISSN.

If the series is numbered, enter the document number in the Number column. The Sort Nr is filled in automatically.

ISBN-ISSN field

This field contains the ISBN of a book or the ISSN of a serial. You can enter the ISBN with or without a space or hyphen between the blocks of numbers. We recommend that you always enter the ISBN in the same way.

Example : 9782212124415 or 978-2-21212-441-5

Issue Reference field

This item (available only in the PRO version of the software) is intended to be filled in only for periodical articles with the issue barcode previously registered and assigned by the software.

Entering the reference of the issue in which the article is published automatically populates the Notes zone field with the periodical title and issue number.

Language field

This section contains the document language. In the case of a multilingual document, enter the main language, then click on the + symbol to enter the document's other languages.

Notes Zone field

This section contains information such as the original title of a translated document, the presence of an index or bibliography, and so on. The various notes are separated by a . -

Example : Translated from german. - Contains a bibliography

Fields Media Type, Carrier Type and Content Type

These fields contain a standardized code. Click on the label of each item to select the desired value.