Monday 30 April 2012

MARC (Machine readable cataloguing)



“MARC is a generic term applied to the universe to MARC formats”
MARC was first developed by Henriette Avram
Evolution:
1st conference on MARC by Library of Congress
2nd conference on MARC by Library of Congress (1965)
LC get a grand from CLR(Council of Library Resources) in 1965 to conduct a pilot project on MARC
3rd conference on MARC by LC in 1966. Official opening of the pilot project.
Pilot project was known as “MARC I”.
MARC I format restricted to books only.
MARC I format entirely based on LC catalogue card
So, BNB (with active participation with LC) makes some operational changes to make it interchangeable format. As a result MARC II was developed(1968)
MARC II – capable for all forms of library material like books, monographs, serial, map, music etc.
MARC II was split into two formats
a.     BNB MARC (Later UK MARC)
b.     US MARC
US MARC becomes US national standard in 1971 (ANSI Z39.2)
& international standard in 1973 (ISO 2709)
MARC II influenced the other countries to develop their own standard format which followed the same structure but the tags were slightly different.
As a result, certain amount of incompatibility exists among different countries
To solve this problem, IFLA launched UNIMARC........ but eventually it failed.
Structure of MARC tapes
LEADER
o       Provides information about total length of record & type of record
o       It is 24 characters (00-23) long
RECORD DIRECTORY
o       It shows what variable fields are in the record and what their locations in the record are.
o       It is of 12 characters long
VARIABLE FIELD
o     Two types : 1)variable control field (001-009) 2) variable data field
UNIMARC
*by IFLA
*1st version of UNIMARC (1977) is only for monographs & serial
*UNIMARC follows the ISO communication format ISO-2709 (1981)






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