Bib - At Symbol

What is this?

Many MARC fields may include the @ symbol, including titles ("Technology @ work"), authors ("Young @ Heart Chorus"), publishers ("Library Press @ UF"), and series ("Teens @ the library series"). Some other fields are quite a bit less common.

When is this trouble?

When the @ symbol shows up in fields where it is not commonly found (such as subject or place of publication), that may be an indicator of a problem.

The @ symbol may have resulted from a character encoding error:

  • 600 00 ǂa Ab@u al-Faraj al-Isbah@an@i, ǂd 897 or 8-967 (should be Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī)

The @ symbol may be stray or incorrect punctuation or subfield coding:

  • 650 _0 ǂa Bassoon and piano music.@
  • 264 31 ǂa [S.l.] @ ǂb Hammer ǂc 1807-1808
  • 650 _0 ǂa Trade associations@xPolitical activity
  • 610 20 ǂa District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency. @ TT General Services Administration.

Exceptions

There are cases where the @ symbol correctly appears in these fields:

  • 610 20 ǂa Young@Heart Chorus.
  • 610 20 ǂa @LAB Architextile Laboratory.
  • 653 __ ǂa Zn-Co@N-doped carbon

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 "Bibliographic" folder and look for the "At Symbol" analysis.