The USMARC Community Information Format: A History and Brief Description

In 1989, the Technologies Committee of the Community Information Section of the Public Library Association was interested in a developing a standard on how to handle community information in machine-readable form. In early 1990, the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office (Net Dev/MSO) attempted to accommodate the data elements from the standardized list in the current USMARC bibliographic format using the existing books data elements, as well as suggesting new fields and subfields, and produced a document detailing how this could be done. In early December 1990, a 2-day meeting was held to review more thoroughly the community information data elements in conjunction with USMARC. Following the meeting, Net Dev/MSO prepared a document detailing the possible configuration of a proposed new USMARC format for community information. At the January 26, 1992, Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee meeting, the USMARC Advisory Group reviewed and approved the proposal as amended as a provisional format.