MARC 21 is an implementation of the American national standard, Information Interchange Format (ANSI Z39.2) and its international counterpart, Format for Information Exchange (ISO 2709).  These standards specify the requirements for a generalized interchange format that will accommodate data describing all forms of materials susceptible to bibliographic description, as well as related information such as authority, classification, community information, and holdings data.  The standards present a generalized structure for records, but do not specify the content of the record and do not, in general, assign meaning to tags, indicators, or data element identifiers.  Specification of these elements are provided by particular implementations of the standards.  The description of the MARC 21 record structure indicates the specific choices made for the MARC 21 implementation of the standards.

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Record Structure