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MARC: News and Announcements (April 16, 2012)

MARC 21 Update No. 14: Full and Concise available online

Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress

Update No. 14 (April 2012) is now available on the MARC website (www.loc.gov/marc/). It is integrated into the documentation for each of the Online Full and Concise formats that are maintained on that site -- the Bibliographic format, Authority format, Holdings format, Classification format, and Community Information format. The documentation includes changes made to the MARC 21 formats resulting from proposals which were considered by the ALA ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI), the Canadian Committee on MARC (CCM) and the BIC Bibliographic Standards Group in January 2012.

The changes are indicated in red. Each format also has an appendix,"Format Changes for Update No. 14 (April 2012)" that lists the changes that comprise the update. The Web version of the formats is the official version and is considered the start for implementation planning for MARC 21. Users are not expected to begin using the new features in the format until 60 days from the date of this announcement: April 16, 2012. For more information about format documentation see: http://www.loc.gov/marc/status.html.

Users who want a print of changed fields will be able to print them from the Format web pages (CDS will not be selling a print version of this update). Changes to the MARC 21 Formats that resulted from Update No. 14 (April 2012) are displayed in red print. The "Format Changes" appendixes described above also incorporate a print guide following the list of changes, to facilitate easy printing.

Current plans are to produce two updates to the formats each year, around April and September. In the past updates were produced annually.

Please note that the MARC 21 Concise Format document will continue to be printed annually and it will consist of the Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings formats. The 2012 edition will include this Update No. 14, and also Update No. 15, which we plan to produce in September. We expect the 2012 Concise in print form will be available in the last quarter of 2012.

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