Special characters

Characters with a special meaning, and library-specific function designations.

Blank

Shown as _. The character is used as a space and as the indicator blank / undefined.

Subfield delimiter

Shown as |. The character separates the parts of the content of variable fields unambiguously.

Fill character

Shown as |. The character fills unused character positions of fixed fields.

Non-filing characters#

Shown as ¬ ¬; start (NSB) and end (NSE). Non-filing characters enclose characters or sequences of characters that are to be disregarded when sorting. They are used in pairs and are placed at the start and at the end of the sequence to be skipped.

Apostrophe, full stop and hyphen are part of the sequence to be skipped; a preceding or following blank, on the other hand, is not.

Some systems, BVS up to version 8.0 among them, mark sequences to be skipped when sorting with the non-filing character ¬ at the start and a blank _ at the end.

Whether non-filing characters are still needed in today's practice was discussed at the BVS advisory services meeting in Mainz in 2017. As a result they have receded further and further into the background and are no longer recommended.

Examples

100b:   Keller, Hans-Jörg ¬[Hrsg.]¬
331_:   ¬XXIV.¬ [Vierundzwanzigster] Parteitag der KPdSU
331_:   ¬Die¬ Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter
331_:   ¬L'¬ écriture de l'historie
331_:   ¬Al-¬ Alamein