ABSTRACT
The new USMARC Format for Holdings and Locations is the latest in a series of standards to control library data that has been developed via cooperative action by individuals, institutions, and organizations. The history of that development has been documented elsewhere in this volume. SOLINET’s (Southeastern Library Network) opportunity to be a part of this “birth of a format” as it were began in the fall of 1983. The directors of the Southeastern ARL (SEARL) libraries who were participating in a serials conversion project, funded by an Office of Education Title II-C Grant, approached SOLINET with a proposal. They wanted an independent organization to test the feasibility of this newly developing format. Most particularly, they wanted to be certain that the format would work as a mechanism for recording serial holdings in a structure that would enable the data to be manipulated: specifically, that the detailed holdings data could be edited for both errors in format integrity and data content; that it could be compressed into a condensed form; and finally, that it could be formatted into a display that conformed to the NISO standards for displaying serial holdings.
