MARC standards

MARC standards define formats for encoding bibliographic and related data in machine-readable records. They let libraries store, exchange, and process structured catalog information.

MARC record structure: The organization of a MARC record into a leader, directory, and variable fields. The leader and directory tell software how to locate and interpret a record’s fields.
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules: A set of rules for describing library materials and determining access points in catalog records. AACR2 cataloging instructions shaped the content entered into many MARC records.
Henriette Avram: An American library scientist who led development of the MARC format at the Library of Congress. Avram directed the work that turned catalog records into an exchangeable machine-readable format.
Library catalog: An organized index of a library’s resources, describing items and helping users locate them. Catalog systems display and search bibliographic descriptions encoded in MARC.
BIBFRAME: A linked-data model developed by the Library of Congress as a successor to MARC for bibliographic description. BIBFRAME replaces MARC’s record-centered structure with linked entities and relationships.
MARC 21: A widely used family of formats for encoding bibliographic, authority, holdings, and other library data. It is the principal MARC format in many libraries and applies the standard’s record model.
Resource Description and Access: A cataloging standard for describing resources and providing access to them. RDA supplies cataloging guidance that libraries can encode in MARC fields.
MARC Pilot Project: A Library of Congress project that tested distributing machine-readable catalog records to libraries in the 1960s. The pilot demonstrated that libraries could use shared MARC records for catalog production.
Online public access catalog: A public-facing electronic interface for searching a library’s collections. OPACs commonly use MARC records as the source for searchable catalog entries.
Dublin Core: A set of metadata elements designed to describe digital and physical resources across domains. Its simpler, cross-domain elements contrast with MARC’s detailed library-specific fields.

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CatalogingRelated: MARC formats let catalog records be stored and exchanged by library systems.