Bib - Title Starting Caps
What is this?
While RDA permits us to capitalize book titles exactly as they appear on the title page of the book (or even to use all caps), the recommendation is to transcribe the title using sentence case; that is, starting with a capital letter and after that only capitalizing proper nouns.
When is this trouble?
Many brief and incomplete records have their title proper in all caps (but may have subtitle in title case), like:
- MEAN THINGS HAPPENING IN THIS LAND
- RUPTURING THE DIALECTIC : the struggle against work, financial crisis, and beyond
A record whose title proper is in all caps appears to many people to be shouting, and may also indicate that the record is otherwise brief or incomplete.
Exceptions
Some book titles do have their actual book titles in all caps, such as:
- FIMFCHUSTIM : fona fimfchur tim
- CHANNELLOCK : the first 105 years
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 "Title Starting Caps" analysis. By default this analysis is looking for titles whose first ten characters are either a capital letter or a space.