264 Place, Publisher, and Date
Record the place of publication, the name of the publisher, and the date(s) of publication according to the following pattern:
264 _1 ‡a Place of publication : ‡b Name of publisher, ‡c Date of publication.
Transcribe the information as found on the book, etc. If any abbreviations are used, transcribe them, but don't supply abbreviations.
If there is more than one place of publication, record the first named only. If there is no place of publication, use your best guess for the name of the country or state followed by a question mark: [Belgium?], [British Columbia?], [Mississippi?]. When you supply the name of a state or province in brackets, do not use abbreviations. If the place can be easily inferred, you can leave out the question mark.
If there is no publisher, omit ‡b (do not use [s.n.]). If there is a publisher named, transcribe what's there, including "Inc." Do not transcribe distributors in 264 _1.
If there is no publication date but there is a copyright date, enter the copyright date in brackets but leave out the copyright "c."
If there is no date of publication and no copyright date, use this year's date or your best guess (complete year) with a question mark [2014?]. You can no longer use hyphens to indicate a range of dates: [20--?]; instead use brackets, "between" and a range of specific dates ending with a question mark: ‡c [between 2000 and 2013?]. If you use a bracketed date, do not enter a period at the end. The date in 008 should match the date in 264 ‡c.
If item is a complete multi-part monograph, record the first date and the last date. If item is an incomplete multi-part monograph, record the first date only followed by a hyphen.
Examples:
In the following example, note the fullness of the publisher information; transcribe what is there, and don't worry about what to leave off. When in doubt, transcribe it. "Inc." is abbreviated only because it appears that way on the book:
264 _1 ‡a New York : ‡b Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., ‡c 2012.
In the following example, you have a 3 volume multipart monograph, complete at the time of receipt.
264 _1 ‡a New York : ‡b Scribner, ‡c 2014.
In the following example, you have the first volume of a multipart monograph; the later volumes have not been received or are not yet published. "N.Y." is transcribed as found; you should transcribe the name of the state or province if there, but don't supply it (see the previous example):
264 _1 ‡a New York, N.Y. : ‡b Alpha, a member of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc., ‡c 2012-
In the following example, there is no place of publication, but the place can reasonably be inferred. If you don't know the town where the University of Connecticut is located, you can still enter the name of the state "[Connecticut]." If you supply the place in brackets, do not use abbreviations, including postal code abbreviations. The book does not have a publication date but it does have c2014 on the verso of the title page. Finally, the book also has Distributed by Yale University Press, which is not transcribed in 264 _1 ‡b. If for some reason you need to transcribe the distributor, use 264 _2 ‡b.
264 _1 ‡a [Storrs, Connecticut] : ‡b University of Connecticut, ‡c [2014]
In the following example, the book has: Boston, Cleveland, and New York but no publisher is named. You only need to transcribe the first named place of publication.
264 _1 ‡a Boston, ‡c 2011.
In the following example, there was no publication information on the book. Sometimes the best you can do for place of publication is to give the name of the country. If the book is fully cataloged and no publisher is named anywhere, a standard phrase is used (the example is from an actual cataloged record). For preliminary records, just leave out ‡b. Note that while none of the publication information is known, the cataloger determined that the item was part of an ongoing multipart monograph (probably because it had a volume number):
264 _1 ‡a [Benin] : ‡b [publisher not identified], ‡c [between 2008 and 2010?]-