Bibliographic records can vary in appearance, content, and format. One key difference is that:
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records may be displayed in natural language citation format, or
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records may be displayed in fields with field tag format.
The importance of this difference is that it is often difficult to find the subject headings (descriptors) for an item if it is displayed in natural language citation format. Subject headings (descriptors) are an important source of information about the content of an item.
The type of item being described affects the content of the bibliographic record. If a particular element does not exist, then that field will not be included.
For example: a bibliographic record for a book or journal article usually contains an author field. A bibliographic record for a periodical does not contain an author field.
The search software for electronic access tools vary considerably in the way they display bibliographic records.
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Most of them start with a short bibliographic record and provide the user with a link to the full or complete record.
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Some will spell out field tags..
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Some will abbreviate field tags.
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Some will use a natural language citation format.
