Skip to Main Content
UN Library logo
Research Guides

MARC Editor User Manual

MARC fields

Like in the Digital Library, you can search in a specific MARC field, for example:

245:manufacturing

If you add another word, the search looks for all of the words in the same field, for example:

245:manufacturing asia

If you only want to look in a specific subfield, you would use the following syntax, just like in the Digital Library:

245__a:manufacturing

For truncation use the asterisk (*):

991:palestin*

Logical fields

Instead of using the actual MARC fields, you can also use logical fields, which are a combination of one or more than one MARC field and have a user-friendly name. For example, the logical field “title” includes several MARC fields that have title-related information (for example 239, 246, 740, etc).

So if you’re not sure in which MARC field the information is recorded, but you know that it is one of the title-related fields, you can search as follows:

title:manufacturing

Searching in more than one field/with more than one term

The search supports Boolean operators, but unlike in the Digital Library, where AND is always the implied operator if you search for more than one word, in the MARC Editor you have to spell it out when you are searching in fields as opposed to free text. The following example looks for all records that have manufacturing in the title and the keyword asia anywhere else in the record:

245:manufacturing AND asia

You can combine a search in one or more MARC field with a search in one or more logical field and more than one keyword:

520:violations AND author:lebanon AND israel

If you want to use NOT, you have to write it as AND NOT

520:violations AND author:lebanon AND NOT israel

At this time we cannot use parentheses to group search terms together.

Looking for specific fields

If you are looking for records that contain or do NOT contain certain fields, use the asterisk, for example:

595:* (will retrieve all records that contain a 595 field)

089:B18 AND NOT 520:* (will retrieve all records that have the value B18 in 089 and no 520 field)

 

Searching for a phrase within a field

To search for a phrase within a field, use the asterisk:

110:* the UN *

520:* provides the name *