Bib - Capitalization - German
What is this?
All nouns in German are capitalized, not just proper nouns. For catalogers unfamiliar with German, a correctly capitalized title in a MARC record may have more capitalized words (including short words) than is common in other languages, such as:
- Stadt an der Grenze in einer Zeit der Gefährdung
- Der Tag, als meine Frau einen Mann fand
When is this trouble?
If a German book has its title recorded with only the first word and proper nouns capitalized, it may be incorrect use of the language. We can identify titles that are likely to be incorrectly capitalized by searching titles for common german nouns in all lowercase; titles found with this search may have other nouns needing capitalization as well.
An example list to search for might be:
- stadt
- zeit
- geschichte
- kunst
- volk
- staat
- recht
- land
- ort
- gebiet
- welt
- erde
- jahr
- tag
- monat
- woche
- frühling
- sommer
- herbst
- winter
- mensch
- kind
- frau
- mann
- könig
- kaiser
- fürst
- herr
- leute
- burger
- name
- wissenschaft
- kultur
- literatur
- sprache
- natur
- religion
- glaube
- gedanke
- idee
- universität
- bibliothek
- schule
- kirche
- amt
- behörde
Exceptions
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 "Bib - Capitalization - German" analysis.