Making a new file of MARC records

Although making a new file is simple in MARC Report, the steps to make use of it are not clear.

If you are doing original cataloging, the place to start is by making templates. In MARC Report, you make templates by selecting 'Edit templates' from the main menu:

Selecting this option will open a navigation window on the templates folder. You may choose one of the templates provided with the program, and customize it, or make your own template from scratch. Follow this link for more information about templates

Once you have your templates sorted out, go back to the main menu (see screenshot above), and select New MARC File. This will open a window with the following rather strange display:

Because of the way our program works, we cannot display a file that contains no records; thus we create a temporary record–which we call a 'new file template'–and that is what you see in the screenshot above. As soon as you add a real record to the file, this dummy record goes away.

To add records to your new file, you may:

Press <F11>

This opens a navigation window on your template folder, and after you select a template, the record will be added to your new file, and the new file template (in the previous screenshot) will go away.

Press <F9>

This attempts to paste the current contents of your clipboard as a new record in your file. Of course, it assumes you have previously pressed <F8> to copy a record to your clipboard.

One way of adding a bunch of templates to a new file is to use <F11> as above, to add a template to your file, and then press <F8> followed by <F9> to duplicate the template as many times as needed.