Review of Content StandardMARC 21 Code List for OrganizationsSeptember, 2005

This review is intended to assess the potential utility of content standards for use and potentially for inclusion in an ISO 11179-based metadata registry. The review is directed primarily toward the utility of the standard itself, rather than to matching the standard with specific agency programs. The review covers issues such as the subject area, currency, quality, authority, and acceptance of the standards. These are factors that need to be taken into account no matter what the programmatic application of the standard may be.

1. Summary

MARC in General

MARC is the acronym for MAchine-Readable Cataloging. It defines a data format that emerged from a Library of Congress-led initiative that began thirty years ago. It provides the mechanism by which computers exchange, use, and interpret bibliographic information, and its data elements make up the foundation of most library catalogs used today. MARC became USMARC in the 1980s and MARC 21 in the late 1990s.

"Machine-readable" means that a computer can read and interpret the data in the cataloging record. A "Cataloging record" means a bibliographic record, or the information traditionally shown on a catalog card. The record includes (not necessarily in this order): 1) a description of the item, 2) main entry and added entries, 3) subject headings, and 4) the classification or call number. (MARC records often contain much additional information.)

1) Description: Catalogers use Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed., 2002 revision, to compose the bibliographic description of a library item. This description includes the title, statement of responsibility, edition, material specific details, publication information, physical description, series, notes, and standard numbers.

2) Main entry and added entries: AACR2 also contains rules for determining "access points" to the record (usually referred to as the "main entry" and "other added entries"), and the form these access points should take. Access points are the retrieval points in the library catalog where patrons should be able to look up the item.

3) Subject headings (subject added entries): Catalogers use the Sears List of Subject Headings (Sears), the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), or some other list of standard subject headings to select the subjects under which the item will be listed. Use of an approved list is important for consistency, to ensure that all items on a particular subject are found under the same heading and therefore in the same place in the catalog.

4) Call number: Catalogers use a Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress classification schedule to select the call number for an item. The purpose of the call number is to place items on the same subject together on the same shelf in the library. Most items are sub-arranged alphabetically by author. The second part of the call number usually represents the author's name, facilitating this subarrangement.

A set of Code Lists is associated with the set of formats.

Code List for Organizations

The MARC Code List for Organizations contains short alphabetic codes used to represent names of libraries and other kinds of organizations that need to be identified in the bibliographic environment. This code list is an essential reference tool for those dealing with MARC records, for systems reporting library holdings, for many interlibrary loan systems, and for those who may be organizing cooperative projects on a regional, national, or international scale. There are a number of data elements in the MARC formats that call for institutional identifiers, the chief ones being those that identify the organization assigning the record control number, the agency responsible for creating or modifying a record, and the agency holding a copy of the item. In particular, it is a key to codes for holding institutions represented in the Library of Congress National Union Catalog (NUC) and other union list publications that contain holdings for reporting institutions.

This code list for organizations is the latest update to the list, previously published under the title USMARC Code List for Organizations (1996 edition). It includes 5,492 new codes assigned since the last edition. A small number of existing codes have been changed or made obsolete. In all cases, previously valid codes are given as references. The large number of new codes can be attributed to continuing expansion of the use of standard identifiers, nationally by school libraries (particularly for statewide projects) and internationally as information is shared globally via the Internet.

2. Identification of Standard

2.1. Title

MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging Record) 21 Code List for Organizations

2.2. Acronym

MARC 21 Code List for Organizations

2.3. Web page(s), Identifier, or Contact Information:

2.3.1 Web page(s)

MARC general:

Code List for Organizations:

2.3.2 Identifier

ISBN 0-8444-1013-6

2.3.3 Contact Information

2.4 Authority

2.4.1 Creator

The Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress and the Standards and the Support Office at the Library and Archives Canada maintain the MARC 21 formats. Input for development is provided by MARC 21 users from around the world, including libraries, library networks and utilities, and library system vendors.

The 1996 edition of the list (the 15th since its inception) was published under the title USMARC Code List for Organizations. The title of this 2000 Edition of the list was changed to MARC Code List for Organizations in recognition of the harmonization of USMARC and CanMARC to form the new MARC 21 format family, and the expanded use of these codes in other MARC formats.

2.4.2. Acceptance as authoritative

Widely used and accepted as authoritative worldwide, especially in the U.S. and Canada.

2.5 Publisher

The Network Development and MARC Standards Office plans and develops library and information network standards at the Library of Congress. It is the maintenance agency for several national standards, including the MARC 21 formats.

The Standards division at the Library and Archives Canada maintains and supports the MARC 21 formats and other library standards.

2.6 Language(s)

The MARC Standards Office encourages independent translation efforts. Various MARC publications and standards have been translated into other languages. There is a list at:

As these are listed in the language of the translation, it’s hard to tell which standards have been translated into each language. The Code List for Languages has been translated into French.

3. Content description

3.1 Subject area of content and area of application

This new edition contains 31,723 codes, of which 27,719 are valid identifiers for general use. The list includes 4,004 references from invalid codes, 2,294 of which are references from codes taken from other published lists.

The codes listed in this publication are used to designate United States and, to a lesser extent, non-U.S. libraries and other institutions. While organizations are free to employ these codes for their own purposes, the primary use of them by the libraries and other organizations is still for bibliographic applications. The list is augmented through applications for new codes, not as the result of unsolicited assignment.

3.2 Kind of content

STRUCTURE OF THE CODES

The MARC organization codes are structured and employ mnemonics to assist in visual location and identification of the institutions represented. The ULS system of mnemonic codes based on geographical location was adopted by the Library of Congress for many institution codes, particularly libraries. While city, state, national, and university libraries do not tend to change location, commercial firms do move occasionally from city to city and state to state. Therefore, identifiers created for them in the early years of the list are usually based on the name of the organization alone rather than a combination of a geographical and name elements. In recent years, a more consistent assignment policy has been implemented which allows for all new codes to begin with a geographic prefix.

General Structure

The following general principles are used for code assignment.

  • Character set - Codes are composed of basic Latin alphabetic characters and the dash ( - ). Parentheses occur in some obsolete codes but are avoided in newly assigned codes. Dashes are counted in determining the maximum length of a code, but are ignored in sorting and in determining uniqueness.
  • Case - Codes generally consist of a combination of upper and lowercase alphabetic characters, although they may consist of all upper or all lowercase letters. The use of upper and lowercase letters helps to improve the readability of the codes. Case is ignored in sorting and in determining uniqueness.
  • Length - Codes are variable in length but should not exceed eight characters. The dash ( - ) that is used in some codes is included in the character count. Beginning in 1989, codes found to contain more than eight characters were either shortened or made obsolete in favor of a newly-assigned (shorter) code conform to a new policy agreed upon by various MARC users.
Structure of Subunits

Each code consists of from one to four subunits. The first subunit usually represents a higher-level geographical jurisdiction. Subsequent subunits generally represent the next-lower jurisdictions and/or the name of the organization itself. The initial character of each subunit is an uppercase letter, although the institutional subunit, the final one, may consist of multiple uppercase letters.

  • First Subunit - For institutions in the United States, the first subunit is usually for a state or territory. For non-U.S. organizations, the first subunit indicates the country. This geographic unit is usually one or two alphabetic characters. U.S. states that were most active bibliographically at the time the system was developed were given a single-letter designation (for example: codes for organizations in New York state use the geographic prefix "N" as the initial unit of the MARC code). Other jurisdictions and those whose names begin with the same letter are identified by addition of a lowercase letter to the initial uppercase letter (for example: "Nc" for North Carolina, "Ag" for Argentina). When the first subunit represents a country, an effort has been made to prefer a prefix that corresponds to codes in the MARC Code List for Countries. For some long-established prefixes (for example: "Ca" for Canada and "Uk" for England), the country-level geographic prefix is different in this list.
  • Second Subunit - In most cases, the subunit for a highest-level jurisdiction is followed by a second subunit representing a geographic entity, such as a city or town. This subunit begins with an uppercase letter and is composed of one or more alphabetic characters. Subunits for cities and towns are usually one or two characters (for example: "TxDa" for Dallas, Texas), although others are longer (for example: "NNopo" for Northport, New York, and "MStoc" for Stockbridge, Massachusetts). The current policy is to prefer two-character prefixes for cities. This has resulted in the "retirement" of some three and four-character geographic prefixes for certain cities, and the expansion of some one-character city prefixes to two characters.
  • Third Subunit - The third subunit usually represents the name of the institution. This unit also begins with an uppercase letter and is composed of one or more upper or lowercase letters. The letters are taken from words in the organization's name, usually initial letters but conflicts with existing codes may require some other choice. Examples include: "MSaE" for Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., "MSaP" for the Peabody Museum in the same city, "PPiUSM" for the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Pittsburgh, Pa., "PPiUS" for the U.S. Steel corporation, also in Pittsburgh, and "FrPURD" for the Université René Descartes in Paris, France.
  • Fourth Subunit (Dashes) - A fourth subunit is sometimes added to a code to identify a subdivision of a larger organization. If the base code is not already seven (7) characters long, it may be separated from the preceding subunits by a dash ( - ), for example, "ICU-L" for the Law Library of the University of Chicago; "DN-Ob" for the Naval Observatory, a division of the U.S. Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C. The fourth subunit also begins with an uppercase letter and is composed of one or more upper or lowercase letters. The letters are taken from words in the name of the subdivision. The dash is counted as one of the characters toward the maximum of eight characters. The code string, without the dash, is also unique against the other valid codes in the list.
Exceptions to Standard Structure

The judgment and work of many persons has gone into the creation and maintenance of the institutional identifiers over a number of years. The following special conventions were used in the early assignment of codes, for simplicity. While no longer applied in newly-assigned codes, familiarity with these older practices helps to understand why a particular combination of letters was assigned to an organization.

  • -Official U.S. state libraries are often identified by the state code alone, e.g., "Mo".
  • -U.S. state universities are identified by an uppercase letter "U" following the code for the state, e.g., "TxU", "InU".
  • -U.S. city, state, and Canadian provincial historical societies are represented by the unit "Hi" added to the appropriate geographic unit, e.g., WHi", "MnHi".
  • -A small number of libraries which participated in the earliest bibliographic projects have retained codes that were assigned to them before the standard structure was established, e.g., "MH" for Harvard and "CtY" for Yale (city subunits omitted for both).
  • -Older codes assigned to the public libraries of U.S. and Canadian cities and towns often consist of the subunit for the U.S. state (or Canadian province) and city alone. Codes assigned after 1992 do not follow this practice and routinely include a subunit representing the name of the organization, even if the name is simply "public library" (represented as "PL").
  • -For commercial enterprises, older codes consist of a code based on the firm's name alone, e.g., "BMI" for Bay Microfilms, Inc., "UnM" for University Microfilms, and "EpG" for the EP Group of Companies. These identifiers are considered a single subunit, that for the institution, which for most other codes is the third unit. Although some of these older codes lacking geographic prefixes are harder to decipher, they have been retained without change as much as possible.
  • -In most cases, the code for an organization is changed when its location or name is changed. In a few instances, organizations prefer to retain an older code, to minimize confusion (for example: some state universities retain letters reminiscent of earlier names or status such as "T" for "Teacher" or "C" for "College").
Use Guidelines

The organization codes in this list are designed to be used wherever the recording of the full name of an organization is not possible or desirable. There is no restriction on their use outside the MARC or bibliographic environment. Because the codes are unique regardless of capitalization and hyphenation, they can be recorded as all lower case letters or all upper case letters, with or without hyphens. The MARC 21 formats prescribe the use of codes from this list in a number of data elements (for example, field 040 (Cataloging Source)). It is recommended that the capitalization and hyphenation shown in this list be followed, as much as possible, to facilitate the legibility and intelligibility of these codes.

Although use of obsolete codes is permitted in the MARC records, their use in newly-created records is discouraged, as obsolete codes are often non-unique or in some way less desirable than the valid codes for organizations. References from obsolete codes to the valid MARC organization codes are included in this list.

CODES FOR ORGANIZATIONS OUTSIDE THE U.S.

Codes for organizations outside the U.S. are generally structured like U.S. codes except that the first subunit is for the country. As stated previously, the first subunit of the code is usually based on the code from the MARC Code List for Countries (for example: "Fr" for France). The second subunit represents the local jurisdiction, usually city or town. The final unit represents the actual name of the organization and may be absent in some cases, as has been described already. For Canada, the subunit for the country is followed by a subunit representing the province, and a third subunit that represents the city or town. The fourth subunit represents the name of the organization. The National Library of Canada (NCL) assigns codes for Canadian organizations. The current practice for the MARC list is to add the prefix "Ca" to the codes assigned by NLC.

In 1973, the National Library of Canada revised all Canadian codes that contained lowercase letters so that only uppercase letters were used. In the U.S., combinations of upper and lowercase letters continue to be used, although for newly-assigned Canadian codes, generally only the second letter of the code (e.g., "CaOONL") is lowercase.