[Metadatalibrarians] Non-MARC records

[Joe Altimus]

Regarding the MARC 21 886 and 887 fields, a record that includes them is
still a MARC record. Those fields provide a means in a MARC 21 record to
accommodate data outside the MARC 21 standard. Those fields are typically
used to hold data that cannot satisfactorily be converted to a MARC 21
equivalent. I have successfully imported and exported both of those fields
using a Millennium system.

Non-MARC records come in many forms, so it's difficult to advise you on what
to look for. What library system are you using now? Does it accommodate
non-MARC records? Ask your system vendor that question and for help in
determining if you have loaded non-MARC records.

Joe Altimus
Arizona State University Libraries

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 5:43 AM, Homa Faridi <homafaridi at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Hello metadatalibrarians,
>
> We are about to change our library system to Millennium, but before doing
> so, we have to know whether we've got any "Non-MARC" records in our OPAC. I
> searched for these records on Google and got nothing useful, I was
> wondering
> how a non-MARC record really look like.
>
> I figured out that some fields (maybe because of importing them from other
> library catalogs) may not be MARC 21 standard fields like 886 (foreign MARC
> field) and 887 (non-MARC field), but does this mean that any records which
> include such fields, are considered as a non-MARC record and will be
> rejected or transmitted faultily to the new system?
> Can you give me more information on this field (non-MARC and foreign MARC
> vs. MARC)? And let me know if there are anyways to solve this issue before
> starting the conversion.
>
> Are there any ways to figure out if we have got any non-MARC records in our
> current system?
>
> All the best,
> H.F.
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