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OCLC Support

MARC 21 view and export

Learn how to view and export MARC 21 records in OLIB.

The MARC 21 View

The MARC 21 view on a title record is available as standard on the General layout.

The title record – Main Details sheet:

The MARC21 view from the MARC Details sheet.

 Note:  In this display the Layout Manager has been used to alter the number of lines displayed to 30 so that we can see the whole record without scrolling.

In older OLIB systems the ISBN may be shown in a 021 tag – this is incorrect and it should be the 020 tag (see Section 4.2 for details on how to correct this).

How to Export

 Note: using OLIB Web it is not possible to export your whole collection using this export method as you cannot display and select all the records in the database. You are limited to c1,000 records at a time. However there is functionality to export a whole database for loading into WorldCat (maintaining additions and deletions automatically) and for those libraries who use the EBSCO Discovery system.

Run your search or open the folder of titles you wish to export. Select the record or records you wish to export.

Select Export from the list of Other Actions.

Choose MARC21 from the list of Available Export Types.

Click on OK and this message will pop-up indicating how many records of which media types are being exported.

Click on the message to start the download. Depending on the browser in use you will see a message prompting you to open or save the [record export filename].

Choose Save as from the list of options. Navigate the directory where you want to save the file and give it a filename in the normal way.

Click on Save – and when returned to the export dialog – click on Close. The records will be exported and an acknowledgement message will display, e.g:

If you now navigate to the directory in which you saved the file – you will see that the MARC Exchange file is present.

Opened in Notepad it displays like this:

 Caution: You should not open a MARC Exchange file in programs like MS Word or WordPad as these will change the character settings and the file will no longer be a valid MARC Exchange file.

If you have installed the marcview.exe tool you can now drag the file onto the marcview.exe icon on the desktop.

The file will be converted into a MARC tagged output for checking.

The marcview output is richer than the MARC21 View seen in section 2 of this manual, as it includes an explanation of the header information.