The "Other" USMARC Formats: Authorities and Holdings. Do We Care to be Partners in this Dance, too?

The archival profession's attention has been focused on the USMARC Format for Archival and Manuscripts Control (AMC), which is part of the USMARC formats for bibliographic data, to the exclusion of the other two USMARC formats: authorities and holdings. The author examines the implications of adopting the USMARC formats for authorities and holdings by looking at the purposes and structures of the two formats, analyzing how they relate to archival description practice, discussing the changes required for the two formats to meet archival descriptive needs, and exploring strategies for the adoption of the USMARC formats to be used in archival information exchange.