Cataloging Tools and Resources

The National Diet Library offers both bibliographic and authority data in the JAPAN/MARC format, which is a machine-readable version of the Japanese National Bibliography.

The National Diet Library adopted the MARC21 format for the JAPAN/MARC in January 2012.
Bibliographic data can be downloaded in the JAPAN/MARC MARC21 format from the NDL Search or the JAPAN/MARC Weekly Update (in Japanese).

Manual

• JAPAN/MARC MARC21フォーマットマニュアル 単行・逐次刊行資料編 (2021年1月版) JAPAN/MARC MARC21 Format Manual for Monographs and Serials (January 2021 version) (PDF: 2.95MB) (in Japanese) (Last Updated 2024-03-01)
• JAPAN/MARC MARC21フォーマットマニュアル 典拠編 (2021年1月版) JAPAN/MARC MARC21 Format Manual for Authorities (January 2021 version) (PDF: 1.45MB) (in Japanese) (Last Updated 2024-03-01)

Related Documents

Rules for character entry in the JAPAN/MARC MARC21 format can be found in Applied Rules for Characters and "Yomi".
The JAPAN/MARC MARC21 records are encoded in Unicode/UTF-8.