Metadata Management Tools for MARC

MARC Cleanup and Batch Editing Scenario

You have a multiple batches of MARC records (in binary format) extracted from your ILS. It represents a collection of children’s board books. There are a number of updates and changes needed to improve the records before they are added back into the catalog.

MarcEdit - What is it?

MarcEdit Home Screen
MarcEdit -- Your Complete Free MARC Editing Utility

Terry Reese created MarcEdit in 1999 while at Oregon State University. Terry is now the Head of Digital Initiatives at Ohio State University.

MarcEdit operates on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

Using MarcEdit Tools

Batch Process MARC Records

MarcEdit Batch Process Screen
MarcEdit Batch Process Screen

MARC Join

MarcEdit Join Screen
MarcEdit Join Screen

Record Depulication

MarcEdit Deduplication Screen
MarcEdit Deduplication Screen

Add/Delete Field

MarcEdit Add/Delete Screen
MarcEdit Add/Delete Screen

Special Undo

MARCValidator

MarcEdit Validator Screen
MarcEdit Validator Screen

Generate Call Numbers

MarcEdit Call Number Screen
MarcEdit Call Number Screen

Generate Cutter Numbers

MarcEdit Generate Cutter Numbers Screen
MarcEdit Generate Cutter Numbers Screen

Regular Expressions in MarcEdit

The power of Find & Replace

If there isn’t a feature to do exactly what you are trying to do, you may be able to use Find & Replace to get the job done. This can be very powerful when used with Regular Expressions.

Warnings:

Example of bad find and replace from the Dungeons & Dragons book Encyclopedia Magica, Volume 1.
Example of Bad Find and Replace: Entry for the Cube of Frost Resistance. Dungeons & Dragons Encyclopedia Magica, Volume 1. 1994.

Sample MARC ETD Data

Regular Expressions

A Regular Expression or regex is a text string that describes a pattern that a regex engine uses in order to find text (or positions) in a body of text, typically for the purposes of validating, finding, replacing or splitting.

MarcEdit Build New Fields Screen
MarcEdit Build New Fields Screen Showing Example Regex

Exporting and Importing Tab Delimited Text

The Delimited Text Translator maps fields in a delimited text file into a MARCXML or MARC file.

Export Tab Delimited Records maps fields in a .mrc or .mrk file, and exports into a .txt (Tab Delimited) file.

pymarc - What is it?

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Python + MARC = PyMARC/pymarc

PyMARC or pymarc is a Python library developed in 2005 by Gabriel Farrell, Mark Matienzo, and Ed Summers.

“It was mostly designed to be an emergency eject seat, for getting your data assets out of MARC and into some kind of saner representation. However over the years it has been used to create and modify MARC records, since despite repeated calls for it to die as a format, MARC seems to be living quite happily as a zombie.”

When to use pymarc

pymarc Tutorials

Two-part (free) webinar series “Introduction to Python and PyMARC” - Part 1; Part 2 - with activities by Lauren Magnuson, Head of Collection Management and Technical Services at California State University San Marcos and Development Coordinator for the PALNI Library consortium.