MARC2RDA

How it works in RIMMF6

Start RIMMF, select “Extra” on the main menu, then open “Marc 2 Rda”.

Drag and Drop a .MRC or MARCXML file onto the “Marc 2 Rda” form.

The MARC data will be transformed to RDA (as rdfXml), parsed into entity descriptions, and a temporary Entity Index (EI) will be created and displayed.

Requirements

1. A version of RIMMF6 later than 20250801

2. JAVA

3. The user must enter the path to java.exe in the program's options.ini file (see Setup RIMMF, below)

Limitations

There is an arbitrary limit on the number of records that can be transformed using this tool.

With files greater than a few hundred records, some functionality become unresponsive, or so slow that the program appears to be hung. The code can in fact transform data of any size–it just can't load the result into RIMMF. We're working on a way to make an alternative available for large files.

Finally, since this code is still under construction, you may find that an update breaks a previously working MARC 2 RDA transformation. In this case, close RIMMF, goto the local RIMMF6 folder (either in My Documents or wherever the portable version was installed), and delete the folder named .\xtra\m2r. Then re-run the update.

JAVA is required to use this processing, and RIMMF6 needs to be able to locate the JAVA binary (java.exe)

First, find the location of JAVA on your computer.

Once you have that information, follow these steps to add it to RIMMF:

1. Update RIMMF to the latest version, start it once, then close it.

2a. Navigate to the “RIMMF6” folder in your My Documents area.

2b. Portable version: Navigate to the folder where the setup.zip was extracted; this will be “setupRimmf6” unless you renamed it. The “options.ini” is located in the “RIMMF6” subdirectory.

3. Open “options.ini” in your favorite text editor.

4. Scroll down to the entry beginning “M2RjavabinDir” (not case-sensitive)

5. Append the full path to your “java.exe” file

For example:

M2RjavabinDir=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-21\bin

[The path and/or version may be different on your system. Do put the path in quotes]

6. Save the “options.ini” file.

To check that the setup is correct, follow these steps:

Start RIMMF.

Select “Marc 2 Rda” from the “Extra” menu.

The “Test” button includes two options, one for .mrc and one for .marcxml. Pick whichever one you will work with most (or test one after the other). If the test succeeds, you are ready to convert your own MARC files to RDA.

The 'MARC2RDA Transformation code' is taken from an open-source project named “MARC2RDA”. It is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal.

Kudos to everyone who has worked on this project over the last few years to achieve what is the first comprehensive and professional conversion of MARC to RDA using current RDA Registry elements and values.

View the project at: https://marc2rda.info/wiki