2F. Date of Publication, Distribution, etc. (Publication, Distribution, etc., Area)
(USMARC Bibliographic: 260c Publication, Distribution, Etc (Imprint))
2F1. Give the date or span dates of commercial publication, etc., as a year or years. Optionally, include the month and day as found on the material. Change roman numerals indicating the year to arabic numerals unless they are erroneous or misprinted (see 2F3 below). Omit words and phrases such as "printed in the year" and "anno," without using the mark of omission.
Optionally, if it is considered important to retain in the catalog record the exact wording of imprint information, transcribe the date of publication, including dates appearing as roman numerals, and any associated words or phrases as they appear in the source. When the date transcribed is in roman numerals, give the date in arabic numerals in square brackets directly following the form in roman numerals. When the date statement is very long, it may be abridged, using the mark of omission.
2F2. Date appears within the place or publisher statement or another area:
When the date is inseparably linked to the place or publisher statement or to information in another area according to one or more of the conditions enumerated in 1B1.1, record it with the element to which it is linked and repeat it in square brackets as the date element of the area.
2F3. Fictitious or incorrect date:
When the year of publication or printing is known to be fictitious or incorrect, or has been misprinted, record it as given and follow it by the abbreviation "i.e." and the correction in square brackets.
2F5. Probable Date of Publication, etc.
2F6. In describing a collection consisting of items published over a number of years, record the date of the first published item and the last published item and connect them by a hyphen.
When the order of publication dates does not correspond to the order of the item numeration, record the date of each item in a note, if desirable.
See also:
2. Publication, Distribution, etc., area
