Recommended WHSO Field Structure

WHSO recognizes three major types of citations: (A) book (monograph or edited volume), (B) chapter (article in an edited volume or book section), and (C) journal article. A fourth type of citation (D) literature review is often differentiated from the other three, but it is a type of journal article (most common) or a chapter (rare).

The WHSO field structure provides for 11 common fields that are used in all records. There are also 11 additional fields that are specific to the different record types. The database structure, therefore, provides that each record have 21 fields as shown below. Fields that are not used in a record are retained as blank fields with no data entered in them. The fields marked with an asterisk are required.

Common fields (all record types) (* denotes a required field)	Book (A)	Chapter (B)	Journal article (C)	Literature Review (B or C)
1*. Record identifier (unique)	X	X	X	X
2*. Document type (fixed)	X	X	X	X
3. Author (subdivided)	X	X	X	X
4*. Title	X	X	X	X
5*. Year of publication	X	X	X	X
6*. List of contributors (subdivided)	X	X	X	X
7*. Subject index terms (subdivided; standardized)	X	X	X	X
8*. Language	X	X	X	X
9. Classification	X	X	X	X
10. Abstract	X	X	X	X
11. Electronic access information	X	X	X	X
Specialized fields (for specific record types)
12. Editor (subdivided)	X	X		B
13. Edition details	X	X		B
14. Publication information	X	X		B
15. Physical details	X	X		B
16. Series	X	X		B
17. ISBN/ISSN	X	X	X	X
18. Title of volume		X		B
19. Journal title			X	C
20. Journal citation			X	C
21. Pagination		X	X	X
22. Citation of reviewed literature				X

Notes: (1) The record identifier must be unique to each record in the database. No duplicates should be permitted.

(2) The document type should be fixed to the above four categories—“book,” “chapter,” “journal article,” and “review.” Individual databases may find it necessary to create other citation forms on occasion, but any new citation types will need to be clearly spelled out.

(3)(6)(7)(12) Author, list of contributors, subject index terms, and editor, are all subdivided repeating fields.

(7) Subject index terms should be standardized, with at least a few major classification terms drawn from the English WHSO thesaurus. All named subjects should be drawn from the WHSO thesaurus. See section on thesaurus for information about suggesting additions to the thesaurus. Non-English subject terms are permissible. WHSO can work with bibliographers who desire to use non-English terms.

(9) Not all bibliographies will have a classification code. If a classification system is used and provided with the record, the entire scheme should be accessible.

(*) A note on diacritic marks and special characters. If at all possible Unicode should be used to enter all characters; if this is impossible a standard set of marks indicating diacritics needs to be used and that encoding should be clearly labeled and be accessible to all users of the bibliography. Suggested formatting for diacritics: “<o’>” for ó; “<U”> for Ü; etc.