Using the USMARC Integrated Format provides for the use of national descriptive standards, their consistent maintenance and revision by a joint committee of the ALA and the Library of Congress, and up to date detailed documentation of the format is always available. The MARC format is already available as a national standard, with extensive documentation that has been created and revised over the last 25 years by scores of librarians, archivists, and other professionals determined to provide appropriate professionals with the best management and descriptive tool available to them. It is designed to be used in the description of materials from the item level to the largest collections/record groups, and everything in between. The various formats incorporated in the Integrated Format allow for the description of just about any conceivable type of material, whether 2 or 3 dimensional. The level of description, i.e., how detailed or sparsely described, is at the discretion of the individual cataloging institution. It should be noted that if the records are loaded on another MARC database, see below, then they will need to meet whatever the minimum description levels are for the database in question. (OCLC and RLIN, for example have minimal descriptive levels for records loaded into their respective holdings lists, but it is difficult to see how anyone would create a record that would not meet their minimums and expect it to have any utility.)

Any software used for creating records descriptions in MARC format should meet ANSI standards for the electronic exchange of information. If the specific software has this capability, then its users have the ability to exchange their records with any other MARC system that also meets the ANSI standards. It does not matter whether the records are being transferred with a stand-alone system, a library OPAC or one of the national bibliographic utilities. The ANSI standards are a means to "package" the information electronically so that the information is in a format that can be sent electronically via the internet, ftp, floppy disk, tape, etc., from one location to another.

One of the misconceptions, fortunately less than in the past, is that the use of the USMARC Format was only for the "big" or "rich" institutions, be they libraries, archives, manuscript repositories, museums, etc. In fact, the smaller repositories have potentially far more to gain from using the USMARC Format. Because it is a national standard, there are not only numerous publications available on how to use it, but for years various professional organizations have been providing workshops on learning and using the Format format. The real costs to using the USMARC Format for description and management of holdings are considerably less than trying to use and maintain a unique database structure. Over time the potential for slippage in maintaining uniform data and standards in a unique and idiosyncratic data structure is far greater than if a professional national standard format is used. Another consideration is the real cost of using proprietary database management software, which the users then have to configure to meet their needs. If that software is significantly revised when next updated, it may require extensive new programming to maintain the unique database structure the user has created. A related consideration is if the software being used becomes obsolete, the data created will need to be moved to another software platform. The cost to do this can be many times what the cost would have been to use a software platform that utilizes a national standard with the ability to easily move the data from one system to another, i.e., the USMARC Format.

Finally, I would note that it is a serious error to consider the MARC Integrated Format as only a descriptive standard. The Format was and is specifically designed to provide the users with the ability to manage and control their holdings, at every stage of their existence. How well that is done is dependent on the information that in entered into the database, and capabilities of the software platform being used. A repository that fails to carefully consider using the USMARC Format could be making a very expensive decision for its institution in terms of cost to maintain an electronic database of, and access to, its holdings.