Code4Lib - User contributions [en]

Working with MARC

2024-06-03T04:54:25Z

PabloBianchi: The site doesn't exist anymore. Link to archive.org snapshot

MARC stands for Machine Readable Cataloging, and many folks in the code4lib community find themselves working with MARC records at some point. This page is meant to be a round-up of the tools for working with MARC. If you want a general introduction to the standard, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards the Wikipedia article] is a good place to start. MARC data is usually expressed either in ISO 2709 ("binary") form or MARCXML form.

__TOC__

== Reference information ==

* [http://www.loc.gov/marc/ Library of Congress MARC Standards Pages] (covers MARC21; formerly USMARC)
* [http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/ukmarc.html British Library UKMARC Pages]
* [http://archive.ifla.org/VI/3/p1996-1/sec-uni.htm IFLA UNIMARC Pages]
* [http://www.oclc.org/content/bibformats/en.html OCLC MARC Pages]

== Desktop tools ==

* [http://marcedit.reeset.net/ MarcEdit]

* [http://csharpmarc.net/ C# MARC Editor]: is a simple and light weight MARC Editor for Windows

* [http://www.auto-graphics.com/download/SHOWMARC.EXE Showmarc]: is a DOS program that will show all the MARC fields used and how many times each is used.

* [http://rossjohnson.homemail.com.au/MARCRTP/ MARC Record Translation Program] (MARC RTP) is a command line utility that shows fields and subfields used in a collection of MARC records and then converts, and selectively imports, into databases built with general-purpose applications.

* The [http://www.loc.gov/marc/marc-functional-analysis/tool.html FRBR Display Tool] takes a file of MARC records and creats XML and HTML files arranged using the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records principles.

* [http://mysite.du.edu/~ttyler/freeware/marcxgen.htm MarcXGen] is a Marc URL extractor and HTML generator. Useful for link checking MARC records.

* [http://www.loc.gov/marc/makrbrkr.html MARCMaker and MARCBreaker] are DOS programs by the Library of Congress for converting MARC records to a text format and back.

* [http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/usemarcon.html USEMARCON] is a multi-platform rule-based MARC record manipulation program. It is a command-line utility but there is also a GUI for it.

== Getting Marc Indexed for Search Engines ==

=== MARC in Solr ===

* SolrMarc https://github.com/solrmarc/solrmarc

* Solr http://lucene.apache.org/solr

* Catmandu http://librecat.org (provides also loading into ElasticSearch, MongoDB and others)

=== MARC in Zebra ===

* Getting Started with Zebra http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Getting_Started_with_Zebra

* Zebra http://www.indexdata.com/zebra

== MARC Programming Libraries ==

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-valign="top"
! Project !! Language !! class="unsortable" | Links !! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-valign="top"
| MARC4J || Java || http://marc4j.tigris.org/ ||
|-valign="top"
| javamarc || Java || http://github.com/billdueber/javamarc || Fork of MARC4J
|-valign="top"
| MARC/Perl || Perl || http://marcpm.sf.net || Umbrella project; see also [http://search.cpan.org/search?query=marc&mode=all CPAN]
|-valign="top"
| pymarc || Python || http://github.com/edsu/pymarc/ ||
|-valign="top"
| File_MARC || PHP || http://pear.php.net/package/File_MARC/ || PEAR package; sanctioned fork of PHP-MARC
|-valign="top"
| PHP-MARC || PHP || http://www.emilda.org/index.php?q=php-marc || Abandoned(?); served as basis for File_MARC
|-valign="top"
| ruby-marc || Ruby || http://rubyforge.org/projects/marc/ <br/> http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Ruby-marc ||
|-valign="top"
| enhanced-marc || Ruby || http://github.com/rsinger/enhanced-marc || Convenience methods for ruby-marc
|-valign="top"
| marc21 || Scheme || http://code.google.com/p/marc21 ||
|-valign="top"
| marcerl || Erlang || svn://pubserv.oclc.org/marcerl|| Very alpha code
|-valign="top"
| Scala-MARC || Scala || http://github.com/achelous/Scala-MARC ||
|-valign="top"
| MARC Library (SobekCM) || C# || http://sourceforge.net/projects/marclibrary/ || Implemented in .NET 4.0 with LINQ and streams with Z39.50 support
|-valign="top"
| CSharp MARC || C# || http://csharpmarc.net || Based upon File_MARC Pear packaged for PHP, but restyled for use in .NET
|-valign="top"
| MARC.NET || C# || http://github.com/willkurt/MARC.NET || basic start, not thoroughly 'real world' tested
|-valign="top"
| marc_record.js || JavaScript || http://www.pusc.it/bib/mel/marc_record.js (dead link) || Part of [http://www.pusc.it/bib/mel/ MARC Editor Lite] (dead link)
|-valign="top"
| marcjs || JavaScript (node) || https://github.com/fredericd/marcjs ||
|-valign="top"
| USEMARCON || C++ || http://www.nationallibrary.fi/libraries/format/usemarcon.html || A rule-based MARC record conversion library
|-valign="top"
| clj-marc || Clojure || http://github.com/phochste/clj-marc || Basic MARC21 and Aleph500 sequential export parser
|-valign="top"
| MARC4J.Net || C# || https://github.com/mxurshid/MARC4J.Net || https://www.nuget.org/packages/MARC4J.Net
|-valian="top"
| marc4js || JavaScript (Node.js) || https://github.com/jiaola/marc4js || Read/transform/write records with Node stream api. Handles MARC8 and UTF8.
|-valign="top"
| marcli || Go || https://github.com/hectorcorrea/marcli || Command line to parse MARC files
|-valign="top"
| fml || Go || https://github.com/MITLibraries/fml || MARC 21 library for Go
|}

A feed of commit messages and release announcements from many of the projects listed above can be found at http://pipes.yahoo.com/gmcharlt/marctoolchanges.

== Utilities and Frameworks ==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-valign="top"
! Project !! Language !! class="unsortable" | Links !! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-valign="top"
| MarcXimiL || Python || http://marcximil.sourceforge.net/ || Bibliographic Similarity Analysis Framework
|-valign="top"
| Catmandu || Perl || http://librecat.org || An ETL-framework to extract, transform and load MARC (and other formats) from/to various databases, indexes
|-valign="top"
| Syntax highlight for bat command || YAML || https://gist.github.com/pabloab/0a532be47e5cf9e12e396cd79d7feabc || Sublime syntax for MARC line mode files (yaz-marcdump), used by syntect and therefore by [https://github.com/sharkdp/bat bat]
|}

== Getting Sample Data ==

One common question is where to get sample MARC records for testing or playing around with. If you work at a library, chances are good that you can get some records out of your ILS (go ask your systems librarian if you don't know how to do this yourself). If you don't work in a library, you can get [http://www.archive.org/details/ol_data MARC bibliographic records from the Internet Archive].

You can also get [http://www.hathitrust.org/data MARCXML data for titles in HathiTrust through OAI-PMH].

There is a nascent movement within the code4lib community to establish a test set of problematic MARC records, especially records that are representative of the kinds of weirdness that is encountered in real libraries. It is hoped that this could eventually become a test corpus against which to run various MARC processing implementations. For more information, watch [http://www.archive.org/details/MARCTHULU Simon Spero's excellent talk from Code4LibCon 2010].

MARC records for authority data are more common. The [http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/download.html Getty Vocabularies] makes both the The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) freely available. The [http://www.library.northwestern.edu/public/gsafd/ Guidelines On Subject Access To Individual Works Of Fiction, Drama, Etc.] records are available from Northwestern University. The [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/filelist.html Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)] are available in many formats, one of them being MARC.

== Reporting on How MARC Has Been Used ==

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160309230658/http://experimental.worldcat.org/marcusage/ MARC Usage in WorldCat] - A snapshot of a former site that reports on how MARC has been used within the 300 million record WorldCat database

Working with MARC

2023-11-07T22:26:02Z

PabloBianchi: Syntax highlight for bat command

MARC stands for Machine Readable Cataloging, and many folks in the code4lib community find themselves working with MARC records at some point. This page is meant to be a round-up of the tools for working with MARC. If you want a general introduction to the standard, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards the Wikipedia article] is a good place to start. MARC data is usually expressed either in ISO 2709 ("binary") form or MARCXML form.

__TOC__

== Reference information ==

* [http://www.loc.gov/marc/ Library of Congress MARC Standards Pages] (covers MARC21; formerly USMARC)
* [http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/ukmarc.html British Library UKMARC Pages]
* [http://archive.ifla.org/VI/3/p1996-1/sec-uni.htm IFLA UNIMARC Pages]
* [http://www.oclc.org/content/bibformats/en.html OCLC MARC Pages]

== Desktop tools ==

* [http://marcedit.reeset.net/ MarcEdit]

* [http://csharpmarc.net/ C# MARC Editor]: is a simple and light weight MARC Editor for Windows

* [http://www.auto-graphics.com/download/SHOWMARC.EXE Showmarc]: is a DOS program that will show all the MARC fields used and how many times each is used.

* [http://rossjohnson.homemail.com.au/MARCRTP/ MARC Record Translation Program] (MARC RTP) is a command line utility that shows fields and subfields used in a collection of MARC records and then converts, and selectively imports, into databases built with general-purpose applications.

* The [http://www.loc.gov/marc/marc-functional-analysis/tool.html FRBR Display Tool] takes a file of MARC records and creats XML and HTML files arranged using the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records principles.

* [http://mysite.du.edu/~ttyler/freeware/marcxgen.htm MarcXGen] is a Marc URL extractor and HTML generator. Useful for link checking MARC records.

* [http://www.loc.gov/marc/makrbrkr.html MARCMaker and MARCBreaker] are DOS programs by the Library of Congress for converting MARC records to a text format and back.

* [http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/usemarcon.html USEMARCON] is a multi-platform rule-based MARC record manipulation program. It is a command-line utility but there is also a GUI for it.

== Getting Marc Indexed for Search Engines ==

=== MARC in Solr ===

* SolrMarc https://github.com/solrmarc/solrmarc

* Solr http://lucene.apache.org/solr

* Catmandu http://librecat.org (provides also loading into ElasticSearch, MongoDB and others)

=== MARC in Zebra ===

* Getting Started with Zebra http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Getting_Started_with_Zebra

* Zebra http://www.indexdata.com/zebra

== MARC Programming Libraries ==

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-valign="top"
! Project !! Language !! class="unsortable" | Links !! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-valign="top"
| MARC4J || Java || http://marc4j.tigris.org/ ||
|-valign="top"
| javamarc || Java || http://github.com/billdueber/javamarc || Fork of MARC4J
|-valign="top"
| MARC/Perl || Perl || http://marcpm.sf.net || Umbrella project; see also [http://search.cpan.org/search?query=marc&mode=all CPAN]
|-valign="top"
| pymarc || Python || http://github.com/edsu/pymarc/ ||
|-valign="top"
| File_MARC || PHP || http://pear.php.net/package/File_MARC/ || PEAR package; sanctioned fork of PHP-MARC
|-valign="top"
| PHP-MARC || PHP || http://www.emilda.org/index.php?q=php-marc || Abandoned(?); served as basis for File_MARC
|-valign="top"
| ruby-marc || Ruby || http://rubyforge.org/projects/marc/ <br/> http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Ruby-marc ||
|-valign="top"
| enhanced-marc || Ruby || http://github.com/rsinger/enhanced-marc || Convenience methods for ruby-marc
|-valign="top"
| marc21 || Scheme || http://code.google.com/p/marc21 ||
|-valign="top"
| marcerl || Erlang || svn://pubserv.oclc.org/marcerl|| Very alpha code
|-valign="top"
| Scala-MARC || Scala || http://github.com/achelous/Scala-MARC ||
|-valign="top"
| MARC Library (SobekCM) || C# || http://sourceforge.net/projects/marclibrary/ || Implemented in .NET 4.0 with LINQ and streams with Z39.50 support
|-valign="top"
| CSharp MARC || C# || http://csharpmarc.net || Based upon File_MARC Pear packaged for PHP, but restyled for use in .NET
|-valign="top"
| MARC.NET || C# || http://github.com/willkurt/MARC.NET || basic start, not thoroughly 'real world' tested
|-valign="top"
| marc_record.js || JavaScript || http://www.pusc.it/bib/mel/marc_record.js (dead link) || Part of [http://www.pusc.it/bib/mel/ MARC Editor Lite] (dead link)
|-valign="top"
| marcjs || JavaScript (node) || https://github.com/fredericd/marcjs ||
|-valign="top"
| USEMARCON || C++ || http://www.nationallibrary.fi/libraries/format/usemarcon.html || A rule-based MARC record conversion library
|-valign="top"
| clj-marc || Clojure || http://github.com/phochste/clj-marc || Basic MARC21 and Aleph500 sequential export parser
|-valign="top"
| MARC4J.Net || C# || https://github.com/mxurshid/MARC4J.Net || https://www.nuget.org/packages/MARC4J.Net
|-valian="top"
| marc4js || JavaScript (Node.js) || https://github.com/jiaola/marc4js || Read/transform/write records with Node stream api. Handles MARC8 and UTF8.
|-valign="top"
| marcli || Go || https://github.com/hectorcorrea/marcli || Command line to parse MARC files
|-valign="top"
| fml || Go || https://github.com/MITLibraries/fml || MARC 21 library for Go
|}

A feed of commit messages and release announcements from many of the projects listed above can be found at http://pipes.yahoo.com/gmcharlt/marctoolchanges.

== Utilities and Frameworks ==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-valign="top"
! Project !! Language !! class="unsortable" | Links !! class="unsortable" | Notes
|-valign="top"
| MarcXimiL || Python || http://marcximil.sourceforge.net/ || Bibliographic Similarity Analysis Framework
|-valign="top"
| Catmandu || Perl || http://librecat.org || An ETL-framework to extract, transform and load MARC (and other formats) from/to various databases, indexes
|-valign="top"
| Syntax highlight for bat command || YAML || https://gist.github.com/pabloab/0a532be47e5cf9e12e396cd79d7feabc || Sublime syntax for MARC line mode files (yaz-marcdump), used by syntect and therefore by [https://github.com/sharkdp/bat bat]
|}

== Getting Sample Data ==

One common question is where to get sample MARC records for testing or playing around with. If you work at a library, chances are good that you can get some records out of your ILS (go ask your systems librarian if you don't know how to do this yourself). If you don't work in a library, you can get [http://www.archive.org/details/ol_data MARC bibliographic records from the Internet Archive].

You can also get [http://www.hathitrust.org/data MARCXML data for titles in HathiTrust through OAI-PMH].

There is a nascent movement within the code4lib community to establish a test set of problematic MARC records, especially records that are representative of the kinds of weirdness that is encountered in real libraries. It is hoped that this could eventually become a test corpus against which to run various MARC processing implementations. For more information, watch [http://www.archive.org/details/MARCTHULU Simon Spero's excellent talk from Code4LibCon 2010].

MARC records for authority data are more common. The [http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/download.html Getty Vocabularies] makes both the The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) freely available. The [http://www.library.northwestern.edu/public/gsafd/ Guidelines On Subject Access To Individual Works Of Fiction, Drama, Etc.] records are available from Northwestern University. The [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/filelist.html Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)] are available in many formats, one of them being MARC.

== Reporting on How MARC Has Been Used ==

[http://experimental.worldcat.org/marcusage/ MARC Usage in WorldCat] - A site that reports on how MARC has been used within the 300 million record WorldCat database

Koha

2023-11-07T22:19:49Z

PabloBianchi: Updated. Liblime stole www.koha.org on 2009. Since then it has a very bad reputation on the community.

[[Category:OSSDirectory]]
* http://www.koha-community.org/
* License: GPL

Koha, a 20+ year old project, was the first open-source [[ILS]] and is licensed under the [[GPL]]. I Basic features include circulation, borrower management, cataloging, and a powerful OPAC. Advanced features include budget-based acquisitions, serials management and MARC authorities control ([[MARC21]] and [[UNIMARC]]). It also supports spell checking, enriched bibliographic content (jacket covers, "read inside", reviews, ratings and descriptions from Amazon.com), RSS feeds of searches and borrower account data, E-book integration, patron-initiated reservations and renewals as well virtual shelves (lists) for organizing collections of records. Notably, recent versions of Koha's OPAC include a powerful standards-based search engine built around [http://indexdata.dk/zebra Zebra], the high-performance indexing and retrieval database. [[Zebra]] supports large databases (more than ten gigabytes of data, tens of millions of records) as well as incremental, safe database updates on live systems. Zebra also brings native support for important library standards such as [[Z39.50]] and SRW/SRU. Koha supports multiple formats for bibliographic records including several flavors of MARC (UNIMARC, MARC21, [[KORMARC]], ESMARC, etc.), MARCXML, MODS and [[Dublin Core]].

Koha was initially developed in New Zealand by [http://katipo.co.nz Katipo Communications Ltd.] and first deployed in January of 2000 for [http://library.org.nz Horowhenua Library Trust]. It is currently maintained by a team of software providers and library technology staff from around the globe and is in use in over 350 libraries. While initial versions were developed for small and medium-sized libraries, Koha is now in use at large libraries including the [http://library.neu.edu.tr/cgi-bin/koha/opac-main.pl Near East University] in Cyprus with over two million titles. A [http://contribs.koha.org community exchange site] was recently opened to allow libraries to easily share contributions to the project. Koha supports a rich translation framework and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. A [http://translate.koha.org translation site] exists to facilitate additional translations. Commercial support is available from several vendors worldwide.

== User Comments ==

[http://webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=1172 Stephen Hedges, Director of Nelsonville Public Library]:
"Was it the right thing to do? We think so. Frankly, after experiencing the sensation of having total control over our software, we could probably never go back to a commercial system."

User:PabloBianchi

2023-11-07T22:15:20Z

PabloBianchi: Just contact information on my personal profile page on the wiki

Hi!

Contact me at pablobianchi at protonmail