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MARC: News and Announcements (October 31, 2008)

MARC 21 Update No. 9: Full and Concise available online

Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Library of Congress

Update No. 9 (October 2008) 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 2008.

The changes are indicated in red. Each format also has a appendix, "Format Changes for Update No. 9 (October 2008)" that lists the fields with changes that comprise the update. The publication of the web version of the format is now 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: December 31, 2008.

The printed and a PDF version of the update will be available through the Cataloging Distribution Service in the near future. The format update will include pages for fields that have been changed, with changes marked with sidelining. At the same time the 2008 Concise formats will be made available in print. It will contain all of the fields in each format and enough description to serve many lookup needs. Changes will also be marked with sidelining. The printed publications will be announced when they are ready for distribution.

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