Guidelines on Form and Genre Thesauri

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CaMS professional catalogers should apply MARC 655 form/genre terms from the thesauri indicated in the table below, according to cataloger judgment and/or project guidelines. There is no library-wide hierarchy of preference for form/genre vocabularies.

Princeton University Library’s collections encompass a broad range of resources across disciplines, material formats, time periods, etc., and catalogers should select form/genre terms appropriate to the item in hand, taking into account the needs of researchers, public services staff, curators, selectors, and other library users.

Do not add exactly matching and/or equivalent terms from multiple form/genre terms. Simply apply a term for the concept from one vocabulary.

(Note that for subject vocabularies such as Homosaurus, there may be rationale to apply similar terms across multiple vocabularies if the additional access point(s) support DEI goals. See guidelines on subject vocabularies for information.)

Controlled Vocabularies for Form or Genre Terms

Indicators and Source Codes

When applying thesauri terms from the list above, catalogers should add the source code of the specific thesaurus, using MARC format 655 _7 ‡2 [source code]. For example,

• 655_7 ‡a Cumulative tales. ‡2 lcgft

Item-Specific Terms

Form terms used to describe aspects of materials that are specific to the item (copy) at hand, such as inscriptions, presentation autographs, or bespoke bindings, should be coded with ‡3 Princeton copy 1 [or 2, 3, etc.] at the start of the field and ‡5 NjP at the end of the 655 field. 

For example: 

• 655_7 ‡3 Princeton copy 1 ‡a Presentation inscriptions ‡2 rbmscv ‡5 NjP

Form terms that refer to aspects of the broader manifestation (issue or edition, in bibliographic terms), such as printed paper wrappers in an edition or a publisher's edition binding, should not be coded as ‡5, since these are not unique to the item at hand.

Subdivisions for Item-Specific Terms

RBMS Controlled Vocabulary for Rare Materials Cataloging and LC Genre/Form Terms should not be subdivided chronologically, geographically, or topically.

Chronological and geographic subdivisions may be applied to item-specific form terms only from the following vocabularies:

• Getty AAT [See FAQ]

• Thesaurus for Geographic Materials II (GMGPC) [See Subdivisions]
  
  

The subdivisions should reflect the date/place of the aspect described by the form/genre term, rather than the printing/publication date/place of the manifestation as a whole (which may or may not differ from the date of the item-specific aspect described).

Chronological subdivisions: should be applied by century, not specific year;

Geographical subdivisions: should be applied by country, not by city or smaller geographical entity. For example:

• 655 _7 ‡a ... ‡z United States ‡y 20th century. ‡2 aat ‡5 NjP

Retired Vocabulary Sets (Do Not Use)

1) RBMS thesauri

RBMS Controlled Vocabularies, previously comprising six distinct thesauri, have been integrated into the RBMS Controlled Vocabulary for Rare Materials Cataloging. Do not add any new terms with the following source codes: $rbgenr, $rbprov, $rbpub, $rbbin, $rbpri, $rbtyp

2) PUL Local Terms

Previously, a select number of Local Form/Genre terms were developed by Special Collections curators and catalogers, for application to specific subsets of material. As their application and MARC encoding has been sporadic, the use of local terms by PUL cataloging staff has been discontinued. 

• Please do not add local genre/form terms when creating or updating catalog records.

You may encounter legacy local terms in our catalog such as "655 _7 $a Photographs, Original. $2 local" If so:

• Replace the local term with an equivalent term from a preferred controlled vocabulary. For instance, "Photographs, Original" is equivalent to "655 _7 $a Photographs. $2 lcgft"

• Leave the term as-is if no alternative can be found.

Appendix

• Form/Genre Terms Report (Barton)

• Form/Genre Policy Draft (June 2020)

• Table of Form-Genre Thesauri (Archived historical page)