020 National Bibliography Number

Field Definition

This field contains the number allocated to the record of a bibliographic item by the national bibliographic agency, and an indication of the country of the agency.

Occurrence

Optional. Repeatable.

Indicators

Indicator 1: blank (not defined)

Indicator 2: blank (not defined)

Subfields

$a Country Code

An identification of the country of the national bibliography (EX 1-4). (Optional and not repeatable)

$b Number

The number as assigned by the agency (EX 14). (Optional and not repeatable)

$z Erroneous Number

A number erroneously assigned to a record (EX 2). (Optional and repeatable)

Notes on Field Contents

The preferred form of the national bibliography number entered in subfield $b is the form in which it is assigned by the agency including spaces, hyphens and other punctuation and following capitalization, etc. The country code of the country of the national bibliography is entered in subfield $a as a two-character, upper case alphabetic code from ISO 3166. For details see Appendix B. When a country has more than one national bibliography, it is suggested that the agencies providing the bibliographies agree on a numeric code suffix to add to the country code to differentiate them.

An erroneous number may be entered in subfield $z. When only an erroneous number is known, the field will contain a subfield $z without subfield $b being present.

When the national bibliography number is used as the record identifier in field 001, it should be entered additionally in field 020.

Examples

Ex. 1:

020 ##$aAU$b67-6

An Australian National Bibliography Number.

Ex. 2:

020 ##$aCA$bCM73-6722XF

020 ##$aCA$zCM78-6722XF

A correct and an erroneous Canadian number.

Ex. 3:

020 ##$aDD$b83,A16,0553

020 ##$aDD$b82,N46,0092

The record for an item in the Deutsche Bibliographie contains a repeated 020 field since the item has appeared twice in the Deutsche Bibliographie; the earlier version of the record was a CIP record. Though the record containing the repeated fields is simply an upgrade of the CIP record, it includes the earlier number since this is the practice of the agency preparing the record.

Ex. 4:

020 ##$aGB$bB81-15605

A number from the British National Bibliography.