RFC 1807 (rfc1807) - Page 2 of 15
A Format for Bibliographic Records
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1807 A Format for Bibliographic Records June 1995
This format is a "tagged" format with self-explaining alphabetic
tags. It should be possible to prepare and to read bibliographic
records using any text editor, without any special programs.
This RFC includes the CR-CATEGORY, a field useful for Computer
Science publications. It is expected that similar fields will be
added for other domains.
This format, as described in RFC 1357, was implemented as part of the
Dienst system and has been in use by the five ARPA-funded computer
science institutions to exchange bibliographic records (Cornell, SU,
UC, MIT, and CMU). Programs have been written to map between this
RFC and structured USMARC (format developed at the Library of
Congress) cataloging records, also from USMARC to the RFC.
The focus of this ARPA-funded research has been into many aspects of
digital libraries including searching and accessing techniques that
do not necessarily use bibliographic records (for example, natural
language processing, automatic and full-text indexing). However, the
continued use of bibliographic records is expected to remain an
important part of the library system environment of the future and
its use is an important link between the physical world of scientific
works and the on-line world of digital objects. The format described
in this paper allows a link between these two worlds to be created.
This format was developed with considerable help and involvement of
Computer Science and Library personnel from several organizations,
including Carnegie Mellon University, Corporation for National
Research Initiatives (CNRI), Cornell University, University of
Southern California/Information Sciences Institute (ISI), Meridian
(now called DynCorp), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford
University, and the University of California. Key contributions were
provided by Jerry Saltzer of MIT, and Larry Lannom of DynCorp. The
initial draft was prepared by Danny Cohen and Larry Miller of ISI.
The revision was done by Rebecca Lasher from Stanford with assistance
from the CS-TR participants.
This RFC does not place any limitations on the dissemination of the
bibliographic records. If there are limitations on the dissemination
of the publication, it should be protected by some means such as
passwords. This RFC does not address this protection.
The use of this format is encouraged. There are no limitations on
its use.
Lasher & Cohen Informational