Conal Tuohy schrieb:
>
>> And how easy is it to talk MODS and be instantly understood, like if
>> someone says 260$c now or 700$t.
>
> Forgive me if I'm being dense, but this is irony, isn't it?
>
It may seem so, granted. But what, as I said earlier, is more
international and language-neutral than a numbering scheme?
Once you know the meaning of numbers (and this meaning in most
cases cannot be expressed in one word), you can communicate
across language barriers without mastering any other language and
without the need to translate English tags into other tags. And try to
find brief, one-word tags in any foreitn language you know. So, MODS
can never be as neutral as MARC already is.
The practicability, the ease, the swiftness of communicating in
numeric tags cannot be achieved with language tags. People in
non-English areas are not happy having English pushed down their
throats all the time. So don't throw away an achievement that's
free of this problem.
The fixed fields, however, are a different story. Storage space was
expensive, that was their raison d'etre. Here, MARC is clearly
cryptic and outdated. But some of the fixed fields, as Mac often
said, needs scrutinizing for their use and usefulness.
But anyway, in most working environments you don't run into the
need to know a lot of MARC since what you need in a situation is
presented in more pleasant ways - but language-centric.
>
> FRBR is the germ of a new data model, ...
no, of a new content standard. Which requires a data model with better
linking facilities in order to map relationships. That's what
DP2007-01 is about.
And as others have said: the tags are immaterial, what matters
is what comes after the numbers, the data input. And hence, the
cataloging rules. If what we find in the 245 or 440, or whatever, is
inconsistent or sometimes there and sometimes not, *then* we are
in trouble, as in fact we are.
"Talking to the rest of the world", as Alexander framed it, doesn't
have to be in MARC. But the rest of the world has no unified language
or protocols. Look at the differences, they're exasperating. We need of
course find ways to improve MARC data (data! lots more difficult than
tagging) in order to communicate in ways the external world is at ease
with. What are the priorities? We cannot serve all the world at the same
time.
B. Eversberg
Received on Thu Jan 18 2007 - 02:06:38 EST