An Acronym for MAchine Readable Cataloging

A record format widely used for bibliographic records. The human readable representation of the format looks something like

LDR 00696nam 22002538a 4500 001 fol05882032 003 IMchF 005 20000707091904.0 008 000630s2000 cau 001 0 eng 010 _a 00058174 020 _a 0764547291 (alk. paper) 040 _a DLC

_c DLC

042 _a pcc 050 00 _a QA76.73.P22

_b F64 2000

082 00 _a 005.13/3

_2 21

100 2 _a Foster-Johnson, Eric. 245 10 _a Cross-platform Perl /

_c Eric F. Johnson.

260 _a Foster City, CA

_b IDG Books Worldwide, _c 2000.

263 _a 0009 300 _a p. cm. 500 _a Includes index. 650 0 _a Perl (Computer program language) 650 0 _a Web servers. 650 0 _a Cross-platform software development.

Many countries have their own national MARC standards, although now that recent versions of USMARC support internationalised text (and other things), many organisations ignore their own national standards and use USMARC (aka MARC21).

Each standard defines what each field number (and subfields) stands for; in MARC21 (used for the above example) some of the fields include

245 = "Title Statement" 260 = PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) (NR) 263 = PROJECTED PUBLICATION DATE (NR)

650 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (R) 651 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--GEOGRAPHIC NAME (R) 653 - INDEX TERM--UNCONTROLLED (R) 654 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--FACETED TOPICAL TERMS (R) 655 - INDEX TERM--GENRE/FORM (R) 656 - INDEX TERM--OCCUPATION (R) 657 - INDEX TERM--FUNCTION (R) 658 - INDEX TERM--CURRICULUM OBJECTIVE (R)

The tags and sub-tags for MARC21 are defined by the US Library of Congress.