General principles

When cataloguing an early printed book, the catalogue record should represent a 'perfect' copy of the book, with notes explaining where the item in hand differs from the perfect copy. Records used from other sources (such as OCLC WorldCat) may differ from the copy you have in hand, but key information including the title, author and imprint should match.

These catalouging guidelines are mostly based on Descriptive Cataloguing of Rare Materials (RDA Edition) (DCRMR). Where these guidelines do not cover a cataloguing issue, refer to DCRMR.

These guidelines are not intended to be comprehensive instructions for cataloguing but a guide to what information should be recorded and where information should be sourced from. For guidance on MARC format, system-specific information and physical processing, refer to the Bibliographic record and Item record guidelines.

These guidelines cover full cataloguing of early printed material. Guidance on what should be included in a minimum viable record can be found here.

Other standards and guidelines used in compiling this guide are:

• RDA

• Beinecke Rare Book Cataloging Manual

• National Library of Scotland, Rare Book Collections Division, Cataloguing Manual

Punctuation

At Wellcome we generally follow ISBD punctuation principles. These same principles should be followed for early printed books. Details of punctuation to use in different MARC fields can be found in the OCLC BibFormats guidance.