ebrary provides MARC records so that you can easily upload info about all your ebrary books into all of your discovery tools. For example, if you provide your patrons with access to an online catalog of your books from various sources, you can upload your ebrary MARC records into the catalog to make your ebrary books discoverable and accessible via your online catalog.
If you have an ebrary subscription collection or if you use ebrary’s PDA model, it is important to load addition records as well as deletion records into your catalog on a regular basis to keep the data in your catalog current.
On about the 20th of every month ebrary automatically initiates “Update MARC Data” for your ebrary MARC records page (unless you’ve manually done it yourself recently) and notifies via email the members on our MARC updates mailing list.
What does the “Update MARC Data” button do?
- It updates your MARC records page with any new info for all your collections (subscription, perpetual, PDA, etc.)
- If there are MARC record additions and/or deletions for any of your collections since the previous dated/time-stamped line, a new dated/time-stamped line will be created.
- To find out when the most recent update of your MARC records page was done, note the date of the dated/time-stamped line at the top of the list.
- Note, it doesn’t do anything to select a collection before clicking “Update MARC Data”, see below to see how to filter by collection.
Incremental changes vs. a complete set:
- The links in the dated/time-stamped lines ONLY give incremental changes since the previous line.
- “Added MARCs”: the add-MARCs for documents added to your site since the previous line. See below to filter by collection.
- “Deleted Titles”: the delete-MARCs for documents removed from your ebrary site since the previous line.
- “Deleted Titles (Excel)“: an Excel file listing Title and docID for documents removed from your ebrary site since the previous line.
- “Download complete MARC record file” gives the complete up-to-date set of MARC records, not just the changes. See below to filter by collection.
To filter by collection:
- If you have multiple collections on your ebrary site, you can get your MARC records for different collections separately (note, delete-MARCs cannot be filtered by collection)
- First, select from the list of your collections either a single collection or control-click to select multiple collections.
- Then, either:
- Left Click “Download complete MARC Record file” for the complete set of MARC records for the selected collections
- Or, left click the “Added MARCs” link on a specific line to get the MARC records for the selected collections that have been added since the previous line.
- The collection filter does not work for “Deleted Titles” links.
Note that clicking on the links (that is, “Download complete MARC record file” or “Added MARCs” or “Deleted Titles”) doesn’t change what’s in those links. So you can use the links multiple times in multiple ways – even months from now – without changing what the links point to.
If you don’t already have a MARC manipulation program, MarcEdit is a free program that allows you to view, translate, and split MARC records. Click to download MarcEdit. We recommend using the most recent version (v5.8+).
MARC (MAchine Record Cataloging) is machine code that can be interpreted by Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs). If your library uses a catalog, we highly recommend you integrate and maintain your ebrary MARC records to provide maximum visibility of your ebrary titles for your patrons.
ebrary’s MARC records use MARC21 with MARC8 (based on ISO 2022) encoding. The records are delivered in .mrc format. To view them, you need a program that reads .mrc files. We recommend MarcEdit, which is a free, downloadable program. See below for more info.
ebrary does not provide other formats (for example: UTF-8, UKMARC, text output). However, if your OPAC only supports text uploads, you can use MarcEdit to translate ebrary’s MARC records to .csv format (comma separated values).
MarcEdit allows you to view, translate, and split MARC records. Click to download MarcEdit. We recommend using the most recent version (v5.8 or newer).
The Library of Congress will implement RDA cataloging standards beginning March 31, 2013.
After polling our customers about adoption time frame, ebrary opted to continue to provide MARC records using AACR2 cataloging standards until October 2013.
Beginning with ebrary’s October upload of MARC records, ebrary will deliver:
- MARC records in RDA cataloging standards, for titles that are new-to-ebrary,
- MARC records in AACR2 cataloging standards, for titles ebrary already had MARC records for prior to October 2013. No conversion will take place.
The titles provided by ebrary frequently evolve and adjust as new e-books become available from publishers.
- Ebrary is constantly on the lookout for relevant new titles to add
- Ebrary removes titles when:
- Publisher loses electronic rights or a title goes out of print
- Publisher changes the way titles are offered. For example, make them available only as perpetual-access, not via subscription
Access to your ebrary titles
- If a title is added to one of your subscription collections, or if you purchase it as perpetual access, it is immediately searchable and accessible on your ebrary site
- If a title is removed from one of your subscription collections, the title will be immediately inaccessible on your ebrary site
- If a patron tries to use a bookmarked link to it and they’re not signed in to their ebrary account, they’ll get a “Document not found” error
- If the patron is signed in, they’ll be shown a preview-only copy of the title (which means they can view a few pages, then are given an alert and cannot view additional pages)
- Once you’ve purchased a title as perpetual access, you retain access to it in perpetuity.
You are notified of additions and removals via the MARC records page
- When a title is added to your site, its MARC record is immediately available to you. To make an ebrary title discoverable via your library catalog, you’ll most likely want to load its MARC record into your catalog
- If a title is removed from your ebrary site, you should immediately remove its MARC record from your catalog to prevent user confusion
- ebrary auto-updates your ebrary MARC records page once a month on about the 20th of the month. To ensure you get all the recent changes reflected on your ebrary MARC records page, you need to click the “Update MARC Data” button
There are three cases you might experience with respect to trying to access a book that is not on your ebrary site:
Case I. If you go to your ebrary site (signed in or not, it doesn’t matter) and search for a title not on your ebrary site…
You’ll find no results – the book isn’t on your site
Case II. If you go to your ebrary site, make sure you are signed out (that is, you are not signed in to your personal ebrary account) and use a direct URL to a book not on your ebrary site (perhaps it used to be)…
You will receive a document-not-found error
Case III. If you go to your ebrary site, sign in to your personal ebrary account, and use a direct URL to a book not on your ebrary site (perhaps it used to be)…
It will seem as if you have full access to the document; however, if you click on the live TOC somewhere in the middle (to make sure you are in the content, not the front or back matter), then try to turn a few pages, you will be notified that you are seeing a “preview only” copy of the document
To summarize, the surprising case is this: if you’re signed in to your personal ebrary account and you use a direct link to a book, you’ll be shown a “preview only” copy of the book if it isn’t on your site – and you may not recognize right away that it is a preview-only copy.