Ross Singer writes:
> > And how easy is it to talk MODS and be instantly understood, like if
> > someone says 260$c now or 700$t.
>
> Yes, instantly understood. Instantly. Nobody would be the slightest
> confused by that.
>
> Do you realize how ridiculous your argument sounds? All these
> labels are just /tokens/. They /could/ be anything, sure, but
> something with semantic meaning is /immediately/ going to be more
> accessible than numbers, more numbers, letters and symbols.
I'm not sure whether or not I buy this. It's certainly true that the
hypothetical MODS elements <coverTitle> and <addedCoverTitle> look
clearer than the MARC elements 246$4 and 246$5. But they also have
the potential to mislead: it's not clear that the semantics of such
elements would be "A title that is printed on the original cover of a
publication or lettered or stamped on the publisher's binding and
which is used when the cover is not the chief source of the
bibliographic description" and "A title in another language found on a
title page that is not used as the chief source of the bibliographic
description" respectively.
(I don't know whether there actually are <coverTitle> and
<addedCoverTitle> elements in MODS. Work with me here. These are
hypothetical examples.)
The point is that an opaque label like 246$4 is entirely explicit and
does not encourage guesswork. There are pros and cons here, and when
I said "I'm not sure whether I buy this" I really didn't mean "I'm not
sure", i.e. it wasn't just a polite way of saying "I don't buy it" :-)
Conal Tuohy writes:
> To me the major failing of MARC is its data model, which is
> inadequate for how people want to use their data these days.
Pre-CISE-ly!
An ounce of recording author surnames and forenames separately within
MARC would be worth a ton of recoding in XML and renaming the fields.
> Just encoding MARC in XML (e.g. MARC-XML or MODS) doesn't improve
> the data model.
... though it's amazing how many people seem to think it does.
_/|_ ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ "I intend to live forever. So far, so good" -- Steven Wright.
Received on Thu Jan 18 2007 - 06:14:58 EST