The UKMARC Manual

The British Library adopted MARC 21 as its cataloguing format in June 2004. Since that date, these pages have not been maintained. Information on our current practices can be found on our Bibliographic Standards pages.

Welcome to the online version of the complete UKMARC Manual, reflecting the cataloguing practice of the British Library in its interpretation of AACR2 and other related standards.

Preface

The UKMARC format was developed primarily to facilitate the production of the printed British National Bibliography (BNB) and thus closely reflects the cataloguing practice of the British Library in its interpretation of AACR2 and other standards. A distinction can however be drawn between the UKMARC format as a national format and its use by the national library in preparing records for the national bibliography, and the UKMARC Manual seeks to make such a distinction.

This manual is not intended as a comprehensive guide to the cataloguing practices of the British Library, but each section contains ‘BNB Practice’ notes which describe the way in which particular fields and subfields are currently used in records created for the British National Bibliography, i.e. BNBMARC records.

This manual does not describe either the use of the format for the exchange of bibliographic records, though this may be touched upon as necessary to illustrate particular points. This information, together with specifications for the exchange of records in different media (such as disc, tape, CD-ROM etc), is covered on the UKMARC Exchange Record Format pages.

The web-based UKMARC Manual will be revised and amended as changes are agreed or new fields added.

Introduction

MARC is an acronym for MAchine Readable Cataloguing. The MARC format was primarily developed as a convenient way of storing and exchanging bibliographic records. It has since been extended to include non-bibliographic forms of library material, such as maps and music scores. There is also a MARC format for the storage and exchange of authority records, but this is not covered in these pages.

The original MARC format was developed by the Library of Congress in the mid-1960s. A pilot project, known as MARC I, was set up to investigate the feasibility of producing catalogue data in machine-readable form. Similar work was being done in the United Kingdom by the Council of the British National Bibliography Ltd. which had set up the BNB MARC Project to examine whether the production of the printed British National Bibliography (BNB) could be simplified by using machine-readable bibliographic records. These two initiatives came together in 1968 in the MARC II Project which was an Anglo-American effort to develop a standard communications format.

For further information please contact:

The British Library
Bibliographic Development
Boston Spa, Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7BQ
United Kingdom

Tel: + 44 (0) 1937 546548
Fax: + 44 (0) 1937 546586
Email: bd-info@bl.uk