A WIDE-FIELD MULTICOLOR SURVEY FOR HIGH-REDSHIFT QUASARS, Z-GREATER-THAN-OR-EQUAL-TO-2-2 .1. PHOTOMETRIC CATALOG AND SURVEY SELECTION-FUNCTION

We provide details of a multicolor (u, b(j), v, or, r, i), wide-field, faint magnitude survey for high-redshift (z greater-than-or-equal-to 2.2) quasars. The survey extends over the magnitude range 16 less-than-or-equal-to m(or) less-than-or-equal-to 20 and covers a total area of 58.6 square degrees. Sources of incompleteness in the photometric catalog are quantified, giving the survey an effective area of 45.7 square degrees. Particular attention is paid to the details of the plate-matching and image-classification procedures used in the generation of the photometric catalog from which quasars are selected, in order that the number of spurious quasar candidates be kept to an absolute minimum. The selection of candidates incorporates a number of novel features, including treating the multicolor information as low-resolution spectra, adopting a quantitative candidate identification algorithm that employs all the available information, and requiring only that objects be detected in the or passband. We describe how model quasar spectra are used to calculate the selection function for the survey, and we present the computed sample completeness, as a function of redshift and magnitude, for a range of representative quasar types. The spectroscopic results of the survey are reported in a companion paper and the derivation of the quasar luminosity function at high redshift will be reported in a third paper.