What is MARC
MARC is a standard created for cataloging books or others documents used in a library.
The MARC format is quite simple :
a MARC record is composed of any number of lines, all divided in 3 parts :
The tag, 3 numeric digits. There are 999 different tags.
The Indicator 2 digits. If any digit not present, it's replaced by # (blank space)
The “subfield” : the subfield is the data container. A line may contain any number of subfields, depending on the label number. A subfield is composed of a $, a letter, then the data.
When represented in a document, the common use is to add spaces between tag, Indicator and subfields, and inside subfields. This space is only here for ease. It's not present in the true file.
Note an information (tag or subfield) may be Mandatory or not, and may be repeatable or not. For example, the 200 tag is mandatory and not repeatable (book title). In the 200 tag, the $a subfield is not mandatory and repeatable (title)
Sample
200 1# $a Je craque $b Text imprim� $f Guy Bedos
200 : title zone
More MARC information[http://www.lib.auburn.edu/catalog/docs/marctaglist.html]
Tag categories
Tag are ordered in a logical way :
0XX (from 001 to 099) : legal information : biblio identifier, international numbers (ISBN or ISMN for music), legal publications, editor numbers…
1XX : coded informations : language, editor country, type of document, physical presentation…
2XX : document description : title, author…
3XX : notes
4XX : links with other notices
5XX : associated titles. It describes other titles used for this documents (original title, translation, old title when a book is re-edited with another title…)
6XX : Indexes
7XX : responsibilities
8XX : international information
9XX : local data : those informations are not mandatory and may be specific to an agency.
