Template:PublicationFields:Date

• Date - The date of publication. Dates are in the form YYYY-MM-DD, where month and day are filled in if known, otherwise they have the value 00. Under certain circumstances, it is allowable to use a date of 0000-00-00, which means that the publication date is unknown. Examples:

  1956-00-00
  1956-11-00
  1956-11-26

• 8888-00-00 is used to date publication records for books that were announced but never published. In most cases these publications turn out to be vaporware, but there is good reason to keep these records in the database: it prevents automated bots and editors using secondary sources from submitting records with duplicate ISBNs as well as establishing a bibliographic record of important titles like Last Dangerous Visions.
• For books, to identify the publication date, try to find a statement (often on the verso of the title page) that says something like "Published in June 2001"; the copyright date is often misleading, since works can be reprinted. Look out for signs that this is a reprint; indications often include a series of numbers (e.g. "3 4 5 6 7 8 9") at the bottom of the verso of the title page; this particular string indicates that this is a third printing. If you know you are holding a reprint, and there is no way to date that particular publication, leave the year field as 0000-00-00. It is sometimes possible to find dates of reprints from subsequent printings which list all printings and their associated dates; if you enter a date from a source like this, record this source in the record's note field. Note that we are interested in recording each different reprint of a publication, since there can be some significant differences between them, such as cover art, or price.
• When entering the date of a magazine/fanzine issue, use the year and month which appear on the cover. If more than one month appears on the cover, use the earliest year and month, e.g. "December 1959/January 1960" should be entered as "1959-12-00". For magazine cover dates which cannot be assigned to a specific month, use the year only, e.g. "Spring 1943" should be entered as "1943-00-00". (Note that the ISFDB uses the cover month even though magazine issues typically become available to the public earlier.)
• If you use a secondary source, such as a bibliography or an SF encyclopedia, to find dates, make sure that you note the source of this date in the publication record's notes field.
• Note also that the publication date does not always perfectly match the calendar date. For example, a January issue of a magazine is usually available in December of the previous year, and often earlier than that. Books with a January publication date may often be bought in the closing weeks of the prior year; they will show the later year's copyright date, even though that year has not yet started. In these cases, the convention is to use the official publication date rather than to try to identify when a book actually first became available. If there is a large discrepancy -- for example if a book was printed but unexpectedly delayed before release -- then this can be noted in the notes field.