Bib - Nonfiling with Articles
What is this?
The second indicator of the 245 title field indicatos how many characters should be skipped to get to the "filing" part of the title.
In English, this typically means skipping past articles like "A", "An", "The" and sometimes punctuation.
When is this trouble?
If this indicator is left at zero, titles may sort strangely:
- That darn cat
- The green jacket
- Total recall
We can try to identify records where this happened by finding filing titles that still start with articles. Note that it is important to keep language in mind when deciding what are non-filing characters, as words that are articles in one language may be non-article words in another language. For example "A" is an article in English, but a preposition in Spanish; "Die" is an article in German, but a verb in English.
Records where the non-filing indicator has not been set may be brief or have other issues.
Exceptions
Some titles start with words that look like articles but should not be skipped:
- A is for apple
- A K Steel Coke Works, Ashland, Kentucky
- An Collins and the historical imagination
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 "Nonfiling - English" analysis. This analysis looks for records where the resource has its main language as English, but the filing title still starts with "A ", "An , or "The ".
Be careful when running similar analyses for languages you do not read, as words that are articles often have non-article usage as well:
- In Spanish, "la", "las", "los" are articles, but they may also be pronouns such as in the title "Las que atrevieron".
- In German, "der", "die", "das" are articles, but they may also be pronouns such as in the title "Das ist gut".