MARC formats and their use: An overview Available to Purchase

As a preliminary part of the feasibility study of UseMARCON this paper introduces the history of MARC formats, identifying subsets or families among them, and provides information about their current application by different national bibliographic agencies, networks and library systems, especially in Europe. The application of MARC formats is reviewed either as internal/cataloguing formats or as exchange formats available in tape services. Special attention is paid to the actual use and trends of UNIMARC, since UNIMARC itself represents a new stage in the evolution of MARC formats, devised to improve and facilitate the exchange of bibliographic information between different systems.