ISO 2709

1. ISO 2709
Presented BY
SHUVRA GHOSH
Roll – 07
Course: MLIS
Department of Library and Information Science
GUIDED BY: Prof. Subarna Kumar Das

2. INTRODUCTION
 ISO is International Organization for Standardization.
 ISO 2709 is an international format for information
interchange.
 It is the world’s largest developer and publisher of
international standards.
 ISO gives world class specifications for products, services
and systems, to ensure quality, safety and efficiency.
 International Standards make things work. They are
instrumental in facilitating international trade.

3. History and development of ISO
• 1946, delegates from 25 countries met in London and
decided to create a new international organization, of
which the object would be "to facilitate the
international coordination and unification of
industrial standards". The new organization, ISO,
officially began operations on 23 February 1947, in
Geneva, Switzerland.

4. What are Standards?
 standard is a technical document designed to be used as a rule,
guideline or definition. It is a consensus-built, repeatable way
of doing something.
 A standard is an agreed way of doing something. It could be
about making a product, managing a process, delivering a
service or supplying materials – standards can cover a huge
range of activities undertaken by organizations and used by
their customers.

5. How does ISO develop standards
 An ISO standard is developed by a panel of experts,
within a technical committee.
 Once the need for a standard has been established, these
experts meet to discuss and negotiate a draft standard.
 As soon as a draft has been developed it is shared with
ISO’s members who are asked to comment and vote on it.
 If a consensus is reached the draft becomes an ISO
standard, if not it goes back to the technical committee for
further edits.

6. What is Standard Organization?
 A standards organization, standards body, standards
developing organization (SDO), or standards setting
organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary
activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating,
revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise
producing technical standards that are intended to address
the needs of some relatively wide base of affected
adopters.
 Standards organizations can be classified by their role,
position, and the extent of their influence on the local,
national, regional, and global standardization arena.

7. Standardization process
A standard published by ISO/IEC is the last stage of a long
process that commonly starts with the proposal of new work
within a committee. Here are some abbreviations used for
marking a standard with its status:
• PWI - Preliminary Work Item
• NP or NWIP - New Proposal / New Work Item Proposal (e.g.,
ISO/IEC NP
• 23007)
• AWI - Approved new Work Item (e.g., ISO/IEC AWI 15444-
14)

8. WD - Working Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC WD 27032)
CD - Committee Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC CD 23000-5)
FCD - Final Committee Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC FCD
23000-12)
DIS - Draft International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC DIS
14297)
FDIS - Final Draft International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC
FDIS 27003)
PRF - Proof of a new International Standard (e.g.,
ISO/IEC PRF 18018)
IS - International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-
1:2007)

9. Major purpose of Standardization
 To permit exchange of bibliographic records between groups
of libraries and abstracting and indexing service.
 To permit a bibliographic agency to manipulate bibliographic
records received from both libraries and abstracting and
indexing services.
 To serve as the basis of a format for an agency’s own
bibliographic database by providing a list of useful data
elements. To assist the development of individual system.

10. ISO 2709
• It is an international format for information interchange.
• It was developed for the exchange of bibliographic record on
magnetic tapes.
• The records describe all forms of material capable of
bibliographic description as well as other type of records.
• Describes a generalized structure, a frame work designed
specially for communications between data processing
systems.

11. Bibliographic format & data
 They are the formats which are used to describe the
arrangement or structure of computer readable record of
bibliographic data.
 Bibliographical data commonly contain
 Fields: Different fields of bibliographic data are title, name of
author, subject, edition, publication data, physical description
of the book, notes, standard numbers (ISBN, ISSN etc.)

12. History & development
 ISO was first created as ANSI/ NISO standard Z39.2, one of
the first standard for Information Technology, and called
Information Interchange format.
 Developed by Henriette Avram in late 1960’s.
 First version was published in 1973.
 Revised and second edition was published in 1981.
 Latest version is ISO 2709: 2008

13. OBJECTIVES OF ISO 2709
 To permit the exchange of bibliographic records between
groups of libraries and abstracting and indexing Services.
 To permit a bibliographic agency to manipulate bibliographic
records received from both libraries and abstracting and
indexing services.
 To serve as the basis of a format for an agency’s own
bibliographic database by providing a list of useful data
elements. To assist the development of individual systems.

14. STRUCTURE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The general structure of a bibliographic record consists
of four major parts:
• Record label
• Directory
• Data fields
• Record separator

15. BASIC STRUCTURE
 Record label—the first 24 characters of the record. This is the only
portion of the record that is fixed in length. The record label
includes the record length and the base address of the data contained
in the record. It also has data elements that indicate how many
characters are used for indicators and subfield identifiers. (See
Variable fields, below)
 Directory—the directory provides the entry positions to the fields in
the record, along with the field tags. A directory entry has four parts
and cannot exceed nine characters in length
 Data fields (Variable fields)—a string containing all field and
subfield data in the record
 Record separator—a single character (IS3 of ISO 646)
• Note that although tags are often displayed as labels on
bibliographic fields and each bibliographic field has an associated
tag, the tags are stored in the directory not in the bibliographic field.

16. Record label
 Contains data that identify to the system, the type of record
contains necessary for the processing of the record such as the
total number of characters length in the record and the length
of various element of record.
 24 characters fixed length field to every record.
 Contains various subunits and each have values according to
the record.

17. No. Label Character
1. RECORD LENGTH 5
2. RECORD STATUS 1
3 BLANK 1
4. BIBLIOGRAPHIC LEVEL 1
5 BLANK 2
6. INDICATOR LENGTH 1
7. SUBFIELD IDENTIFIER LENGTH 1
8. BASE ADDRESS OF DATA 5
9. BLANK 3
10 BLANK 1
11. LENGTH OF ‘STARTING
CHARACTER POSITION IN EACH
DIRECTORY ENTRY
1
12 LENGTH OF
‘IMPLIMENTATION-DEFINED’
SECTION OF EACH DIRECTORY
ENTRY
1
13 BLANK 1

18. Directory
 Contains ‘content designator’ for each data field followed
by an indication of the position in the record where the
data relating to that field start and the length of the field.
 If a field is repeated, it has two entries in the directory,
one for each appearance.
 Each directory entry corresponds to an occurrence of a
data field in the record, and is divided into five parts:
• TAG
• LENGTH OF DATA FIELD,
• STARTING CHARACTER POSITION
• SEGMENT IDENTIFIER,
• OCCURANCE IDENTIFIER

19.  Tag: A three character code identifying the data field which corresponds to the
directory entry.
 Length of Data field: A four-digit number showing how many characters are
occupied the data field, including indicators and data field separator but excluding
the record separator code if the data field is the last field in the record.
 Staring Character Position: A five-digit number giving the position of the first
character of data field relative to the base address of data, i.e. the first character of
the first of the data field.
 Segment Identifier: A single character (chosen from 0-9 and/or A-Z) which
designates the data field as being a member of particular segment.
 Occurrence Identifier: A single character (chosen from 0-9 and A-Z) which
differentiates multiple occurrences of the data fields that carry the same within the
same record segment

21. DATA FIELD
 A variable length portion of the particular category of data
associated with one entry in the directory. A data field may
contain one or more sub field.
 The last components are the form and content of the data
elements, varies according to the ‘cataloguing rules’ used as
well as according to the way the different data element
prescribed by the rules and divided up and separately
identified by the format.

22. Data Field Structure

23. Record separator
• The record separator is the final character of the
record. It follows the field separator of the final data
field of the record. A single character

24. Example of Label
00101a_m-2200067_452_ [24 character]
The characters in the example label indicate the following in
the sequence:
00101 =total number of characters in the records
a =record status (here it indicates that it is a new record)
- =Blank space (one)
m =bibliographical level:monograph
-- = Blank space (two)
22 =indication that the data in each field other than ‘001’
begin with a two –character indicator and each subfield begins
with a two character indicator and each subfield begins with a two
character identifier.
00067 =length if the label and director: the first character of
the record is numbered 0, and therefore the label and the directory
extend from character position 0-66, and the data start at character
position 67.
--- =blank space (three)
452 =indication that the sound, third and fourth elements of
each entry in the directory consist of four, five, and two characters
respectively. The first element, i.e., the tag, always consist of
three characters in any implementation of ISO 2709, and is
therefore not indicated.
- = Blank space (one)

25. Example of Directory
001000700000**200001000023**300001600007**#
The directory consists of an entry for each of the fields present in the
record (three in case).The characters in the example directory indicate
the following (in sequence).
01 =tag for the first field
0007 =length of the field
00000 =starting character position
** =occurrence of the field and the number of the segment
containing the field (not used here)
200 =tag for the second field
0010 =length of the field
00023 =starting character position
** =occurrence of the field and the number of the segment
containing the field (not used here)
300 =tag for the third field
0016 =length of the field
00007 =starting character position
** =occurrence of the field and the number of the segment
containing the field (here not used)
# =end of directory

26. Example of Data Field
A12345#00@AJones@BJohn#00@AFruit#%
The characters in the example data field indicate the following (in sequence)
A12345 =data
# =field separator
00 =indicator
@A =subfield identifier
Jones =data
@B =subfield identifier
John =data
# =field separator
00 =indicator
@A = subfield identifier
Fruit = data
# = field separator
% =record separator

27. Example

28. Content designator
• Represented in most bibliographic formats by
Tags
Indicators
Subfield codes
• Different agencies have theirs own content designators
• It is possible to convert the content designators automatically
in order to convert data from one format to another

29. Tags: Three digit numeric value used as identifier known as tag.
Indicators: Indicators, where they are used, appear at the
beginning of each field in the data portion of the record.
Subfield Codes: 1.Subfield Identifier – A characters preceding
with a subfield code. For example, ‘$’ sign is used as subfield
identifier in UNIMARC
2.Subfield Code – A character preceding and
identifying a subfield. For example, subfield ‘a’ is title proper in
the ‘title and statement of responsibility’

30. Scope
• This International Standard describes a generalized structure, a
framework designed especially for communications between
data processing systems and not for use as a processing format
within systems
• As an ISO 2709 based MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic
Data is designed to be a carrier for bibliographic information
about printed and manuscript textual materials, computer files,
maps, music, continuing resources, visual materials, and mixed
materials

31.  Books (BK) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript and microform textual
material that is monographic in nature.
 Continuing resources (CR) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript, and
microform textual material that is issued in parts with a recurring pattern of
publication (e.g., periodicals, newspapers, yearbooks).
 Computer files (CF) - used for computer software, numeric data, computer-
oriented multimedia, online systems or services. Other classes of electronic
resources are coded for their most significant aspect. Material may be
monographic or serial in nature.
 Maps (MP) - used for all types of printed, electronic, manuscript, and
microform cartographic materials, including atlases, sheet maps, and globes.
Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

32.  Music (MU) - used for printed, electronic, manuscript, and
microform music, as well as musical sound recordings, and non-
musical sound recordings. Material may be monographic or
serial in nature.
 Visual materials (VM) - used for projected media, non-projected
media, two- dimensional graphics, three-dimensional artefacts or
naturally occurring objects, and kits. Material may be
monographic or serial in nature.
 Mixed materials (MX) - used primarily for archival and
manuscript collections of a mixture of forms of material.
Material may be monographic or serial in nature.

33. ADVANTAGES OF ISO 2709
 It provides a small number of mandatory data elements,
which are recognized by all sectors of the information
community as essential in order to identify an item.
 It gives mandatory data elements that are sufficiently
flexible to accommodate varying descriptive practices.
 It also provides a number of optional elements, which
may be useful to describe an item according to practices
of the agency, which creates the record.
 It provides a mechanism for linking records and
segments of records without imposing on the originating
agency any uniform practice regarding the treatment of
related groups of records or data elements.

34. ISO2709 and MARC
• ISO 2709 (ISO, 1996) provides the framework for MARC, and
this is visible in the MARC formats’ use of three-character
field codes, the use of indicators, and the use of sub-field
codes.
• ISO 2709 and MARC formats can be used for data types other
than bibliographic data.
• ISO 2709 is obviously made in XML, but offers only some of
the advantages inherent in XML. Certainly, XML is a
mainstream technology, but it is still the MARC format with
fields, sub-fields and indicators that is embedded in the record.

35. ISO 2709 and Copy Cataloguing
• Copy cataloguing is a process of cataloguing items using pre-
catalogued machine readable records.
The process of copy cataloguing:
 Search for the bibliographic record in bibliographic databases
that allow copy cataloguing;
 If record is available in database, download the record in ISO
2709 format; .
 Add local information such as class number, book number, bar
code and local notes;
 Validate record.
 Save the record in the database of the LMS software.

36. Conclusion
• During the last 25+ years, a radical change has occurred in the
mechanism for transfer of bibliographic data. The current
situation is both success and failure; success, because millions
of records structured according to IS0 2709 are now available
for exchange. Some national formats, for example USMARC,
have become virtually international. IS0 2709 will remain as a
universally recognised standard for MARC. MARC is a set of
codes defining the data dements of a record in automated
systems. It is estimated that MARC and other exchange
formats will continue for some time. As long as organisations
wish to exchange record or derive bibliographic data from
central agencies, and until computer technologists devise cost
effective and relatively simple ways of transferring
bibliographic data in different formats between systems,
exchange formats remain necessary.

37. References
• Chowdhury, G.G. (2007).Organizing Information. Facet Pub.
• ISO (n.d). Retrieved October 13, 2018 from
https://www.iso.org/home.html
• ISO-2709. (n.d). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 10, 2018 from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO-2709
• Chandrakar, R. and Others. (2004). Standards for Creating Bibliographic
Databases in Indian Academic Libraries under INFLIBNET Umbrella.
Retrieved October 10, 2018 from
http://ir.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/1944/423
• What is standard. (2018). Retrieved October 10, 2018 from
https://www.bsigroup.com/en-IN/Standards/Information-about-
standards/What-is-a-standard/
• Converting bibliographic records into ISO 2709. (2018). Retrieved October
10, 2018 from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51995146_Converting_bibliographic
_records_into_ISO_2709_format_Access_Presentation

38. Thank you