About MARC Records

MARC stands for MAchine Readable Cataloging and is a standard system for digital storage of bibliographic records. It was designed by the United States Library of Congress to provide a simple, standard method for representing bibliographic information and to make it easy to share this information among a wide variety of computer systems.

Each MARC record contains all the bibliographic information for a single edition of a single title. Additional copies or volumes of a single edition of a single title can (and in most instances should) be cataloged with only one MARC record by adding multiple holdings entries to the record.

This guide presents only a brief introduction to MARC records. Perhaps this is all you need (or even want) to know about MARC. If not, there are many marvelous publications on MARC cataloging, some of which are probably available in your local public library. There is a great deal of current, in-depth MARC information at the Library of Congress' MARC web site, available on the web at https://loc.gov/marc.

Parts of a MARC Record

MARC records contain a number of fields. Each field contains a single part of the bibliographic record. For example, the title information is contained in one field, and the author, edition, call number, and subject headings are stored in other fields. Fields are also broken down into one or more subfields.

Each MARC field has a number, often referred to as a tag that defines the type of information stored in the field. Most of the tags from 001 through 899 have been defined by the Library of Congress to contain specific information. The field tags from 900 to 999 are not standardized and may be defined by the vendors or users of MARC records (although some general standards have arisen).

Some commonly used and well-known MARC field tags are:

• 010 - Library of Congress Cataloging Number (LCCN)
• 020 - International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
• 024 - UPC code, often used for non-book media such as music CDs, DVDs, etc.
• 050 - Library of Congress call number
• 082 - Dewey Decimal classification
• 100 - Author's name and related information, known as the "personal name main entry"
• 245 - Title statement
• 260 - Publishing information
• 300 - Physical description including the number of pages, dimensions, etc.
• 440 - Series title statement
• 520 - Summary annotation
• 650 - Topical subject heading
• 852 - Local holdings information, such as barcode and local call number

A Sample MARC Record

Let's take a look at a the way a MARC record is displayed in Surpass Cloud's Resources View Page page. Note that this sample only shows a portion of the entire record.

There are five columns shown in the above MARC record: Tag, Field Name, Indicators, Subfield, and Contents of Field.

1. The first column, contaings the Tag number of the MARC field. Fields can be numbered from 001 to 999.

2. The second column contains the Field Name. These may be abbreviated. Note in the example, for MARC Field 100, the name "personal name main entry" is abbreviated as "ME:PersonalName."

3. The third column contains the Indicators, which are up to two digits that describe the information in the field. The meaning of the indicator digits is different for each field.

4. The fourth column is the Subfield code and name. A subfield breaks down the field into one or more smaller, more specific fields. Each subfield is identified by a single lowercase letter or a digit. For instance, the Physical Description field (300), above, has three subfields: $a, $b and $c. 300 $ a contains the number of pages (266 p.), 300$ b contains other physical details (illus.), and 300$c contains the physical dimensions of the book (22 cm).

5. The fifth column contains the Contents of the MARC field/subfield -- the actual data.