worktitle

Worktitle is a term used to denote the official title of a creative or intellectual work. In bibliographic, cataloging, and metadata contexts, the work title serves as the primary identifier that readers, libraries, and databases use to recognize and distinguish a work from others. The phrase is often encountered in discussions of titles, but in practice it is more common to see “title of the work” or simply “title” in everyday use.

A related but distinct concept is the working title, which refers to a provisional label assigned during development or planning. A working title is not necessarily the final published title and may change before release.

In libraries and bibliographic standards, the work title is central to record-keeping. The title proper is the exact form of the title as published, including any subtitles. Cataloging rules distinguish between the title of the work and other descriptive elements, such as edition, language, or date. In standard bibliographic schemas, the title appears in specific fields, and variants or translations may be noted separately to aid discovery and citation.

In digital systems, the term worktitle may occur as a field name in databases or APIs, often written in camelCase as workTitle or in a plain form as work title. It is not a universal standard term, and implementation varies across platforms. Regardless of form, the work title remains fundamental for attribution, search, and citation of a creative work.