Additions to the MARC Country and Geographic Area Code Lists

The codes listed below have been approved for use in MARC 21 records. They include MARC country and geographic area codes for states and territories in Australia requested by the National Library of Australia.

From 1972 until the adoption of USMARC as the national standard in 1991, Australia had its own MARC specification, AUSMARC, that included more specific country codes for states and territories. The National Library of Australia has continued to use these more specific codes in its national bibliographic database for the ability to retrieve data by state and territory jurisdiction.

Codes are available at this level for similar jurisdictions in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The following new codes are defined for Australian states and territories and will be included in the next edition of the MARC Code List for Countries.

New code Place name
• aca Australian Capital Territory
• xga Coral Sea Islands Territory
• xna New South Wales
• xoa Northern Territory
• qea Queensland
• xra South Australia
• tma Tasmania
• vra Victoria
• wea Western Australia

The following new codes are defined for Australian regions and will be included in the next edition of the MARC Code List for Geographic Areas.

New code Place name
• u-atc Central Australia
• u-ate Eastern Australia
• u-atn Northern Australia

Note that specific GAC codes were already available for the Australian states/territories listed above.

Subscribers can anticipate receiving MARC records reflecting these changes in all distribution services no earlier than September 12, 2005.


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