MARC import and export

Bookleaf reads and writes MARCXML — the XML serialization of MARC21. That means records you build here are not trapped in Bookleaf, and records other libraries have already catalogued do not have to be retyped.

What is supported

• MARCXML (.xml), both import and export.
• Binary ISO 2709 (.mrc) is not supported in version 1. If your file is .mrc, convert it to MARCXML first — MarcEdit does this in a few clicks and is free.
• Z39.50 / SRU live copy cataloging is not supported. There is no live lookup against the Library of Congress or any other catalog, because that would require exactly the internet dependency the product avoids.

Importing

1. Open Import from the catalog and choose your .xml file.
2. Review what will be created.
3. Import.

Bookleaf reads the record leader to decide the material type — book, serial, thesis, map, audiovisual and so on — and falls back to Book when a record is ambiguous. Check the material types after importing a batch from an unfamiliar source; a wrong type mostly affects which fields appear on the record and which loan rule applies.

Authorities are linked automatically

Authors, publishers and subjects in the incoming records are matched against your existing authority records, and new ones are created where there is no match. So a large import does not undo authority tidying you did by hand.

It matches on the heading as written. Two spellings of the same author in the source file will produce two authorities, which you can merge afterwards.

Version 1 is lossy, deliberately

MARC fields that Bookleaf models are imported. Fields it does not model are dropped, not stored in a hidden blob. So a record that goes through Bookleaf and out again is not byte-for-byte identical to the original.

For a school or small college library this is almost never a problem — the dropped fields are typically ones nobody was using. But if you are the custodian of records that must round-trip losslessly, keep the original files. Do not treat Bookleaf as your archival copy.

Exporting

Export → Export MARCXML writes the current catalog view as a single MARCXML <collection> file. (The other entry in that menu, Export CSV, writes a spreadsheet instead — see Importing from a spreadsheet.)

That means the search box acts as your filter: search first, confirm the list is what you want, then export. With no search active, you get the whole catalog.

Use this to:

• Hand records to a consortium or a partner library
• Move to Koha or another system (see the Koha comparison)
• Keep a portable, standards-based copy of your cataloging work alongside your encrypted backups

Export is bibliographic only. Copy-level holdings — accession numbers, shelf locations, per-copy conditions — are not encoded in the exported records. If you are migrating to another system, plan to move holdings separately.

A note on quality

Imported records are only as good as their source. A batch from a national library is generally excellent. A batch from a book supplier is often minimal — title, author, ISBN, and little else.

Import them anyway. A thin record that exists is more useful than a rich record you have not typed yet, and you can enrich the ones that matter as they circulate.