MARC21 and CNMARC,two types of machine readable catalogue(MARC)currently adopted by the Union Catalog Database of China Academic Library&Information System(CALIS),serve as the formats for bibliographic descriptions.The differences and characteristics between MARC21 and CNMARC from three aspects:the setup of field indicators,the content and sequence of series entries,as well as their corresponding relationships were summarized.It aims to provide references for cataloging Chinese book bibliographic data.