Do not leave blanks or supply zeroes for missing information. Sep Oct Nov Dec Use only one of the above formats. The Publication Date can be a crucial piece of information to the user attempting to restrict or to evaluate search output. Restricting search output to items prepared in a given time period is one of the most common ways to partition the file and thereby to limit output. When searches employ the Publication Date as an element in the search logic, the absence of a date can prevent an otherwise legitimate retrieval from occurring.
Documents generally carry dates on their covers, title pages, or front matter.
In addition, contacts with authors or sources via telephone, correspondence, FAX, etc., can also often reveal dates. Although for most fields catalogers are advised to catalog solely from the document inhand, the Publication Date is one field for which some data must always be supplied, whether on the document or not. The Publication Date field in CIJE is supplied by the computer, which copies the year from the Journal Citation field and enters it in the Publication Date field. The Publication Date is a mandatory data element for all RIE and CIJE records. The cataloger must enter a Publication Date for all RIE records.