Common Cataloging Terminology: Explained

“DLC” is the OCLC symbol for the Library of Congress. To determine whether something is a “DLC record”, the DLC symbol can appear in several places in the 040 field.

For a record originally created by DLC, the DLC code will be in the 040$a. Like this:

The Library of Congress may adapt a record created by another organization. In this case, the original creating organization will be in the 040$a and DLC will appear in the 040 $c. To qualify as “a DLC record”, there should also be an 050 field with 00 indicators. You may also see “lccopycat” in an 042.

You may also see something in the 040$a like NJQ/DLC, with DLC in the $d. These records were created by libraries who have partnerned with the Library of Congress to catalog upcoming titles. See the Library of Congress CIP Partnership Program page for more details.

An abbreviation for the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Subject Heading

Machine readable cataloging

“The MARC 21 formats are standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form.”

See The MARC 21 Formats: Background and Principles for further information.

All organizations who have a Cataloging subscription to OCLC have a “symbol”, which is their unique identifier in OCLC. This is a combination of numbers, letters, and/or characters. For example, PINES (the organization) has a symbol of P@N. When an organization creates or edits a record, their symbol is added to the 040 field in the record. If an organization doesn't have a Cataloging subscription to OCLC, they will still have a MARC organization code.