ABSTRACT

This entry describes the development of the MARC Communications format. After a brief overview of the initial 10 years it describes the succeeding phases of development up to the present. This takes the reader through the expansion of the format for all types of bibliographic data and for a multiple character scripts. At the same time a large business community was developing that offered products based on the format to the library community. The introduction of the Internet in the 1990s and the Web technology brought new opportunities and challenges and the format was adapted to this new environment. There has been a great deal of international adoption of the format that has continued into the 2000s. More recently new syntaxes for MARC 21 and models are being explored.