Barcodes - Early Letter

What is this?

Many library barcodes are made mostly of numbers, but may have a letter as their final check-digit. If a barcode in your catalog has a letter that appears in the barcode but is not the last character, the call number in the catalog may not match what is on the book, or may not be correctly constructed.

Why is this trouble?

A barcode may have been hand-typed or entered through an OCR process, resulting in a number being identified as a letter, characters transposed, or some other error. Example:

  • 304255591B496
  • 30425552169B6

A barcode may be properly constructed but identified as a duplicate barcode during migration, so had extra characters added at the end to make it unique. Example:

  • 304250999690D-1908994
  • 304253996669J-1621270

A barcode may have been scanned twice, or had a second barcode scanned right after it. Example:

  • 304254509699D304254509698
  • 304253993729D304253993729

Exceptions

Some libraries may use barcodes where this construction is appropriate.

How to Find

If you are in Alma, there is an analysis to search for this issue in the "Looking for Trouble" folder. Go to the "Barcodes" folder and look for the "Early Letter" analysis. This looks for barcodes with letters that appear somewhere other than at the end of the barocde.

If you can search or filter your barcodes by regular expression, you can use the expression: /[A-Ba-z].$/