Appendix 1: Normalization Rules for Bibliographic Headings
Steps for Normalizing Headings:
- Take the first 150 characters of the Heading (excluding MARC tag and indicators, but including subfields and delimiter characters);
- Strip non-filing characters (taken from the 245, second indicator or the SKIP fixed-length field)
- Strip apostrophes and diacritics;
- Replace the ampersand character (&) with the word “and”;
- Strip all special characters, except “+”, “#”, “$”, “%”, and “@”;
- Replace subfield delimiters and punctuation with “null” characters (i.e., “space”);
- Collapse multiple sequential “null” characters into single “null” characters;
- Take the first 125 characters of the resulting string.