Directory (NR)
MARC 21 LITE Bibliographic
April 2008
Computer-generated index to the location of the variable control and data fields within
a record. The Directory immediately follows the Leader at character position 24 and
consists of a series of fixed-length (12 character positions) entries that give the tag,
length, and starting character position of each variable field.
[Link to MARC 21 Concise
Formats]
Character Positions00-02 - Tag Three ASCII numeric or ASCII alphabetic characters (upper case or lower case, but
not both) that identify an associated variable field.
03-06 - Field length Four ASCII numeric characters that specify the length of the variable field,
including indicators, subfield codes, data, and the field terminator. A Field
length number of less than four digits is right justified and unused positions
contain zeros.
07-11 - Starting character position Five ASCII numeric characters that specify the starting character position of the
variable field relative to the Base address of data (Leader/12-16) of the record.
A Starting character position number of less than five digits is right justified
and unused positions contain zeros.