Surveys the evolution and development of MARC formats for the digital encoding of bibliographic data from their beginnings in 1968 at the Library of Congress to the present time, with particular emphasis on the development of 17 national formats. Examines the reasons for the divergence of MARC formats from each other as well as the early and recent trends in the development of national MARC formats.
AustraliaThe Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN), the network operated by the National Library of Australia serves over 700 Australian libraries, providing them with cataloguing data and online access to bibliographic and location information [1]. ABN provides a variety of products such as microfiche catalogues, laser-printed lists and catalogue cards, but its most important product is MARC cataloguing data which is delivered to ABN clients for use in their local integrated library management systems or online catalogues.ABN depends for its services on the National Bibliographic Database (NBD). The NBD consists of files of cataloguing, location and other associated data and is compiled from MARC records received from a variety of sources in five countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA [1]. The Australian data in the Bibliographic File was originally generated according to the Australian MARC format (AUSMARC).The AUSMARC format, first published in 1973, was based on UKMARC for the initial purpose of being able to create the Australian National Bibliography by using the British National Bibliography software [2]. Some modifications, however, were made to the UKMARC format, such as: expansions to existing information codes or data fields, addition of new codes or data fields, a field for availability note and a Ferguson (Ferguson collection of nineteenth-century Australian materials)[1] number note, and the expansion of country and language codes to cater for Australian needs [3]. The format was so close to UKMARC format that it used the 002 subrecord directory for analytics and a level digit was assigned to each field of each analytical entry, a multilevel method to handle analytical entries [4, p. 109]. Some of the other similarities to UKMARC are: punctuation, in not requiring ISBD punctuation; the coding of series and uniform titles which is more like UKMARC's coding than LCMARC's; blank indicators are not allowed; and the use of 900-945 reference structure from UKMARC[2,. The third edition of the format published in 1979 was due to the publication of AACR2 which had been reflected in the second edition of UKMARC [4].
The continuing emergence of differences between national formats of MARC and the problems caused by them, were matters of concern at the start of the 1970s. The need for agreement on content designators for a common format and greater uniformity in cataloging practices were the most frequently occurring themes in the literature of the period (Gredley and Hopkinson, 1990).As a result of these issues, the idea of an international MARC network to study the problems caused by different formats appeared to be the best solution. An international MARC network study had to deal with the issues of normalization of descriptive data, normalization of subject data, communications networks, bibliographic data exchange policies, and cooperative planning and development. The issue of cooperative planning and development brought together many groups of MARC users. The getting together of the Library of Congress and the British National Bibliography for cooperative activities was followed by the INTERMARC group which was the first attempt to develop an international format. Another international attempt of the kind was ABACUS, the meeting of the representatives of the British Library, Library of Congress and the National Libraries of Australia and Canada to increase coordination in the forward planning of their MARC services. In addition, representatives from different countries involved in the early work in the Internatinal Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA, 1980, p. 1) working group on content designators also formed a group which worked on what was later to become UNI-MARC.The first and second editions of UNIMARC were published in 1977 and 1980 , respectively (IFLA, 1980. The introductory notes to the second edition stated that the scope of the format was to specify the tags, indicators and subfield codes to be assigned to bibliographic records in machine-readable form for monographs, serials, cartographic materials, films, music and sound recordings, and that eventually it would be expanded to include manuscripts and other forms of materials (IFLA, 1980, p. 1). This feature was a departure from the Library of Congress format which was 20
The machine‐readable catalogue (MARC) is now more than 20 years old. It has been, and still is, criticized from different points of view. Reviews some of the positive and negative opinions on MARC, as expressed by different sectors of the profession, and studies the future of MARC in relation to technological innovations. Concludes that MARC remains a valuable means of communicating bibliographical information.
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