The SBC Standard

The SBC standard – Standard for Barcodes and Catalogs – has governed how libraries exchange item and bibliographic data, and how their barcodes are constructed, since 1998. It is the de facto standard across church-run public libraries in Germany.

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What the standard covers#

Library identifier — the seven-digit number that uniquely identifies each library.
Barcode specification — how an SBC barcode is built from an identifier and a barcode number, encoded in Code 39 or Code 128.
Title specification — record structure and every data field from 001 to 761.
Data carrier specifications — the layout of catalogue data carriers and of interlibrary loan and book-block data.

How the standard came about#

The library management system BVS (external site) has supported this standard from the outset, developed together with the church library advisory services. Since 2000 these services have met annually with IBTC (external site), the makers of BVS.

The 2001 annual statistics of Catholic library work in the area served by the Borromäusverein (external site), together with the 2001 IT survey of Protestant library work, show BVS to be the most widely used system in this sector.

In May 2004 the advisory services of the Borromäusverein committed to introducing SBC barcodes (StandardBarCode für Deutschland) across the libraries in their care. In autumn 2004 the Committee for Library Software and Data Exchange of the Catholic library service adopted the SBC standard as the basis for its standardised interface BAFO (external site) (BibliotheksdatenAustauschFOrmat, library data exchange format).

The first draft of the title specification for version 3 was published in November 2011. It reflects the practical requirements that have emerged within the BVS community.

After more than twenty years, the SBC standard can, to the best of our knowledge, be regarded as the de facto standard for data exchange among church-run public libraries in Germany. BVS Minerva (external site), the next generation of IBTC's library management system, supports the standard as well.

Where it sits#

The SBC standard took its cue from MAB (external site) and other formats, but is a specification in its own right. BAFO (external site) in turn is based on SBC:

MAB
 └─ SBC
     └─ BAFO

This page was translated automatically from the German original. If anything reads oddly or looks wrong, please let us know — the German edition prevails.