USMARC Concise Bibliographic: Leader and Directory



LEADER


A fixed field that comprises the first 24 character positions (00-23) of each record and provides information for the processing of the record.

Character Positions


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DIRECTORY


A computer-generated index to the location of the variable control and data fields within a record. The Directory immediately follows the Leader at character position 24 and consists of a series of fixed-length (12 character positions) entries that give the tag, length, and starting character position of each variable field.

Character Positions