The Birth of MARC in the 1960s and the Modern Turn of Virtual Library

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MARC (Machine-readable Cataloging) is the world's most widely used bibliographic information format, originating in the United States in the 1960s and becoming the first worldwide standard format for book cataloging at the end of the 20th century. Before MARC was born, libraries used collection cards to record and store bibliographic information. Librarians should fill in the bibliographic entries on paper card by hand, to create collection cards. The completed collection cards are arranged in a card case in the same order as reality books, likes a simple information system. However, since modern society had entered the late 20th century, the traditional classical methods of managing and providing information could no longer meet the rapidly increasing demand for information resources. In the 1960s, Henriette Avram, a computer scientist at the Library of Congress, developed the first machine-readable catalog, MARC. Instead of handwritten text, MARC fills in and stores bibliographic information in data format on CD-ROMs or other records. Through output terminals, it can provide bibliographic information in a form that meets the user's requirements and operating environment. The advent of computer processing in place of manual work, and greatly improved the efficiency and accuracy of processing bibliographic information. It enabled MARC to handle the explosive growth of information resources since the late 20th century. The cataloging format developed by Henriette Avram became the national standard of the U.S. in 1971 and was renamed to US MARC in 1985. In 1999, US MARC was unified with CAN MARC of Canada to MARC 21. After that, each country's MARC format had gradually migrated to MARC 21. MARC 21 format has become the de facto worldwide standard of cataloging format. The interchange of bibliographic information within a global scope became possible. The time has come for users to be able to use the resources of multiple libraries together without time and space limitations. With the birth of MARC, an international standard for catalog formats was established. The flow of bibliographic information has transcended national level and taken place on a global scale. As Marshall McLuhan predicted, national borders are no longer barriers or boundaries to human communication. In addition, the unification of cataloging formats has made cooperative cataloging became possible. Each library can utilize the public bibliographic base, and only need to create bibliographies that do not exist in the database. The created bibliographies are then included to the database and can be used by other libraries. This has greatly reduced cataloging workand made the production of information resources more efficient. Looking back on the birth of MACR, it is hard to separate it from the scientific, technological, and social innovations of the time. Even on the eve of the information age, it turned from a card case with entities to a database. It uses virtual space to solute information resources in a more flexible way. When considering the image of the next generation of virtual libraries, the information resource itself, the subject of the virtual library, is certainly important. But we also believe that new possibilities can be found in the library space as a container to collect, organize, interchange, and provide information sources.