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+<body>\r
+ <p>The goal of MARC4J is to provide an easy to use Application Programming Interface (API) \r
+ for working with <a href="http://www.loc.gov/marc/">MARC</a> and \r
+ <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/marcxml/">MARC XML</a> in Java. MARC stands for \r
+ MAchine Readable Cataloguing and is a widely used exchange format for bibliographic data. \r
+ MARC XML provides a loss-less conversion between MARC (MARC21 but also other formats like UNIMARC) and XML.</p>\r
+ \r
+ <p>The structure of a MARC record is defined in the ISO 2709:1996 (Format for Information Exchange) standard \r
+ (or ANSI/NISO Z39.2-1994, available <a href="http://www.niso.org/standards/resources/Z39-2.pdf">online</a> \r
+ from NISO). The MARC4J API is not a full implementation of the ISO 2709:1996 standard. The standard is \r
+ implemented as it is used in the MARC formats.</p>\r
+ \r
+ <p>MARC4J provides readers and writers for MARC and MARC XML. A {@link org.marc4j.MarcReader} \r
+ implementation parses input data and provides an iterator over a collection \r
+ of {@link org.marc4j.marc.Record} objects. The record object model is also suitable for in-memory \r
+ editing of MARC records, just as DOM is used for XML editing purposes. \r
+ Using a {@link org.marc4j.MarcWriter} implementation it is possible to create MARC or MARC XML. \r
+ Once MARC data has been converted to XML you can further process the result with XSLT, for \r
+ example to convert MARC to <a href="http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/">MODS</a>.</p>\r
+\r
+ <p>Although MARC4J is primarily designed for Java development you can use the command-line \r
+ utilities {@link org.marc4j.util.MarcXmlDriver} and {@link org.marc4j.util.XmlMarcDriver} \r
+ to convert between MARC and MARCXML. It is also possible to pre or post process the result \r
+ using XSLT, for example to convert directly from MODS to MARC or from MARC to MODS.</p>\r
+\r
+ <p>The source code is published under version 2.1 of \r
+ the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html">GNU Lesser General Public License</a>. \r
+ In brief, this means there's no warranty and you can do anything you like with it. \r
+ The text of the license is included in the distribution. If you make changes to MARC4J and redistribute \r
+ those changes, then you must publish your modified version under the LGPL.</p>\r
+\r
+ <p>For more information about the MARC4J project visit <a href="http://marc4j.tigris.org">http://marc4j.tigris.org</a>.</p>\r
+\r
+</body>\r
+</html>
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