CODEWITHSUNDEEP
marc
userSteve
userSteve

Reputation: 1644

Is there an easy way to tell different MARC formats apart?

I’m just starting to understand and use MARC files. The program I’m writing will read in MARC files from various sources, there’s no way in advance to know what type of MARC file it will be.

Is there a standard way to differentiate between USMARC, UKMARC, MARC, UNIMARC & MARC21?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 209

Answers (1)

anarchivist
anarchivist

Reputation: 1426

MARC is a superset of formats, and MARC21 is a specific family of formats. Both are based on ISO2709. USMARC, UNIMARC, and CAN/MARC were harmonized to become MARC21. While you could probably write some heuristics to automatically identify the different formats, I don't know of any tools to do this automatically.

The best option might be to look at some sources of documentation such as the following:

Upvotes: 1

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