Foreign MARC Coalition

The Foreign MARC Coalition (FMC) is an informal organization which seeks to provide a mechanism by which information regarding the acquisition, analysis, conversion, and distribution of non-North American MARC records may be exchanged. The FMC was established as a result of an investigation conducted for the Cooperative Cataloging Council (CCC) in 1992-1993. Although the FMC is independent of the CCC and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) which succeeded the Council, its work is closely related to PCC goals, particularly those which seek to increase the availability of catalog records for the benefit of the library community and its patrons.

MEMBERSHIP

The member institutions and representatives who comprise the FMC are:

• Library of Congress: John D. Byrum, Jr. (Chair); Sally McCallum
• Library and Archives Canada: Margaret Stewart
• OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.: Doug Perkins
• RLG: Karen Smith-Yoshimura

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the Coalition include:

1. To identify the sources of and increase the availability of non-North American authority and bibliographic records by:
   • Sharing information about large non-North American bibliographic and authority files available in a MARC-compatible format;
   • Providing feedback on established non-North American MARC services;
   • Promoting use of standard methods of recording data among major supplies of non-North American MARC data (e.g. ISBDs, standard character sets and transliteration schemes, coding structures for access points); and,
   • Continuing to encourage networking capabilities among agencies supplying bibliographic information (e.g. common formats, FTP, Z39.50).
2. To enable and encourage use of authority and bibliographic information created outside North America by:
   • Promoting widespread adoption of Library of Congress Subject Headings as a standard for subject analysis, including promoting development of software to programmatically enable machine translation applications; and,
   • Promoting greater conformance to the provisions of MARC 21.
3. To inform the PCC Policy Committee regarding the highlights and outcomes of the FMC's deliberations.

The Foreign MARC Coalition meets twice annually in conjunction with the Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference of the American Library Association. Meetings are open to appointed FMC representatives.

July 1, 2004