Susan Goldner was named AALL representative to the ALA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI) last year. She will be keeping us up to date on developments in MARC formats and the work of MARBI in the "MARC Remarks" column. We welcome Susan to the ranks of TSLL columnists. – ed.

Let me begin by thanking you for the opportunity to serve as your MARBI Representative. I am honored to be able to represent you. Please let me know if you have concerns about MARC issues or if there are topics that you would like for me to address in this column. My intention is to use it to report on MARC related issues which directly affect our law libraries. Other specifics from the MARBI meetings will be in my formal annual report, but not mentioned here.

While on the subject of thanks, I want to give Rhonda Laurence a very large thank you. She championed our cause at MARBI meetings for the last five years. During her tenure some very significant changes took place. Of particular importance to us, she fought for the inclusion of loose-leafs in the definition of integrating resources and had a positive impact on the outcome of the repeatable 260 field decision. (More later.) MARC 21 was published harmonizing U.S. and Canadian versions of MARC. Rhonda is a hard act to follow.

About MARBI

MARBI is a committee of three divisions of ALA. But it is more. Currently 34 people are involved, representing a diverse group of institutions. Official participants at these meetings include MARBI Committee Members, who are voting members appointed by three ALA Divisions (ALCTS, LITA, and RUSA). MARBI also has interns, who are appointed by those Divisions, and [...continued]