Psychology Wiki

MARC standards

34,192pages on
this wiki


Professional Psychology: Debating Chamber · Psychology Journals · Psychologists

MARC is an acronym for MAchine-Readable Cataloging. It is a 'communications standard [for] exchanging bibliographic, holdings, and other data'(2) between libraries. It defines a bibliographic data format that emerged from a United States Library of Congress-led initiative that began in the 1970s. It provides the protocol by which computers exchange, use, and interpret bibliographic information. Its data elements make up the foundation of most library catalogs used today.

The MARC Standards Office is part of the Library of Congress.


The future of the MARC formats is a matter of some debate in the worldwide library science community. On the one hand, the formats are quite complex and are based on outdated technology. On the other, there is no alternative bibliographic format with an equivalent degree of granularity.

MARC record typesEdit

Authority records -- MARC authority records provide information about individual names, subjects, and uniform titles. An authority record establishes an authorized form of each heading, with references as appropriate from other forms of the heading.

Bibliographic records -- MARC bibliographic records describe the intellectual and physical characteristics of bibliographic resources (books, sound recordings, video recordings, and so forth).

Holdings records -- MARC holdings records provide copy-specific information on a library resource (call number, shelf location, and so forth).

MARC "flavours"Edit

There are many national as well as international "flavours" (variants) of MARC, including

MARC 21 is not a new format. The original American version of MARC became USMARC in the 1980s; there was also a separate Canadian version with minor differences called CAN/MARC. After making minor changes to both formats, the USMARC and CAN/MARC specifications were merged in 1997 to create MARC 21, the name intended to reflect the 21st century. The British Library has announced that it will no longer develop the UKMARC standard it had maintained since 1975, in favour of MARC 21.

See also Edit

External links Edit

da:MARC standarder fr:Format MARCnl:MARC (standaard) nn:MARC-standardar zh:機讀編目格式標準


Around Wikia's network

Random Wiki