MODS pretty much IS MARC. It's not a "re-invented" MARC, because it
doesn't hardly re-invent anything.
It turns MARC into XML, gives it XML-style tag names instead of numbers
and letters, and makes some of the particularly unsystematic and
irrational parts of MARC more systematic and rational, taking advantage
of the flexibility of XML vs. MARC's usual format.
Don't get me wrong, these are improvements. I see very little reason NOT
to be using MODS instead of MARC. But if anyone's looking for radical
change to our encoding and transmission formats, it's not MODS. If
anyone thinks that MODS is already too radical a change---we're really
in trouble.
I don't personally think that a change in
encoding-and-transmission-format is what we need anyway. The problem is
that MARC ends up being used as a data model and a content standard,
when it shouldn't be. We need improvements to data models and content
standards, and if we had them, we could keep on using MARC, no problem,
interchangeably with a bunch of other serialization formats. But people
need to start trying to put MARC in it's place instead of trying to use
it as a data model and a content standard. Maybe using MODS instead of
MARC would help push people in that direction, just by making people see
things in a new way.
Jonathan
Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
> Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>>
>>
>> While I assert there is no "right" answer to this question, at first
>> blush I would suggest MODS. It is an XML data structure and the
>> element names are word, not numbers.
>>
> And how easy is it to talk MODS and be instantly understood, like if
> someone says 260$c now or 700$t.
> How do you pronounce caps inside words, BTW?
>
> The subject isn't new at all. 30 years ago, I attended a conference.
> The big heads in library automation of that time were present, like Fred
> Kilgour. I asked the question if MARC mightn't be simplified to make it
> easier to understand and use. Someone said, well, they had thought of it
> and tried very hard to work out something better. But they ended up
> re-inventing MARC. MODS is another re-invented MARC, only much more
> loquacious.
>
> But MARC is not the battlefront. Some improvements, like for names,
> are conceivable. But it is interfacing that matters, all the time.
>
>
> B.Eversberg
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed Jan 17 2007 - 13:30:26 EST