Z39.50 Implementor Agreement 7: Embedding MARC in a GRS-1 Record

Z39.50 Implementor Agreement 7:

Embedding MARC in a GRS-1 Record

July 28, 1998

This is an Implementor Agreement on how to embed a MARC record within a GRS-1 record (this agreement pertains to the case where GRS-1 is the record syntax and does not address nor preclude the case where one of the MARC formats, e.g USMARC, is the record syntax).

When a MARC record is to be embedded inside a GRS-1 record, the MARC record should be encoded as EXTERNAL, via the 'ext' CHOICE for ElementData. The associated Object Identifier (for the EXTERNAL) will be the Object Identifier assigned to the particular MARC format (e.g. 1.2.840.10003.5.10 for USMARC).

The reason for this agreement is that there is more than one way to embed MARC within GRS, for example, the MARC record could be encoded as OCTET STRING, where an applied variant is supplied to identify the MARC format.

According to this agreement, the EXTERNAL form, rather than OCTET STRING, should be used, and whether or not an applied variant is supplied is not addressed by this agreement (it may, but need not, be supplied).

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