MARCXML

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Last updated: May 08, 2006Version comment
1 min read

Notes, information and links about MARCXML and how it relates to Citations in Sakaibrary should go here.

MARCXML is a widely used standard for representing bibliographic data. Many metasearch engines, electronic library catalogues and licensed content vendors understand and can communicate in MARCXML. For example, MetaLib returns metasearch results in MARCXML.

A major disadvantage of MARCXML is that it is not easily understood by humans. The tagging framework is based on numbers and letters as opposed to descriptions. For example:

MARCXML
<datafield tag="100" ind1="1" ind2=" ">
  <subfield code="a">Sandburg, Carl,</subfield>
  <subfield code="d">1878-1967.</subfield>
</datafield>

versus

MODS
<name type="personal">
  <namePart>Sandburg, Carl</namePart>
  <namePart type="date">1878-1967</namePart>
  <role>
    <text>creator</text>
  </role>
</name>

MODS is a standalone, XML-based standard to represent bibliographic data. MARCXML can, somewhat painlessly, be transformed into MODS using XSLT provided by the Library of Congress.