MassCat: Unusual, Unique and Unexpected!

Reporting Bibliographic Problems or Duplicate Records

The Cataloging Center encourages participants to send in error correction or upgrade requests for faulty or poor bibliographic records, as well as duplicate record reports when multiple identical records are found. Problems which affect searching (i.e., titles, authors, subjects, etc.) will be corrected first. 

Thank you for helping to keep MassCat clean!

• Reporting errors in title information
• Reporting errors in other areas of a record
• Reporting duplicate records
• Requesting upgrades to a minimal record

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Reporting Errors in Title Information

Cataloging rules and conventions require that the information for certain elements of a record come from specific areas of the item being cataloged. For example, title information for books may only come from the title page area.

Because of this, we can only accept reports of errors for title-related information via fax or through the mail. These reports must be accompanied by photocopies of the title page of books, or photocopies of the title areas for other types of media. (only photocopies of dark print on a light surface will fax well, so please use mail or delivery if your photocopy is hard to read).

Print out the record and note the changes you want - please be specific! Photocopy the title page or equivalent and fax or send to the Cataloging Center. Please make sure to include your name and contact information so we can contact you if we have questions.

As long as you have the item in hand, please scan the bibliographic record to see if any other information needs to be filled in, like pagination and/or book size. If this information or any other information is lacking, please note it on the record as well. Book size must be measured in centimeters.

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Reporting errors in other areas of the bibliographic record

Request the following corrections using our electronic form (you may also print the web-form and fax or mail, if you prefer):

Report of errors in information not taken from the title page

Note: Corrections to searchable fields (author, title, subjects) will be handled before those to non-searchable fields (publisher, place of publication).

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Reporting duplicate records

Use this electronic form to report duplicate records:

Duplicate record reports

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Requesting upgrades to a minimal record

If you find very brief records in the MassCat database, please do one of the following:

For an item you do not own:

Please print out the record and fax or mail it to the Cataloging Center. We will either replace the record with fuller information or we will request information from the owning library.

For an item you do own:

Please print out the record and write on it any additional information that the Cataloging Center will need to find a matching fuller record: exact title from the title page, standard number(s), author, publisher, date, extent (i.e. pagination or running time), format, etc. Fax or mail the edited record to us.

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