I think there's a dual problem. It is very true that almost all current
systems we have do not take true advantage of MARC the way they should.
On the other hand though, MARC (and more to the point---our conventional
ways of _using_ MARC; MARC is in fact quite flexible, but what matters
is the corpus of MARC records we've got, in all their consistency or
inconsistency--some of this inconsistency is 'legacy', but much of it we
continue to produce as well)--anyway, MARC is in some cases not
well-suited to what systems want to do with it. And I think Hank makes a
very astute observation when he says "This is seen as a failure of MARC
when it is, in fact an evolution of the catalog."---part of the issue is
that what we currently want to do with our metadata, what digital
systems are currently capable of providing in other environments and our
users are expecting--is something beyond what was envisioned in MARC.
The problem needs to be attacked from all angles at once, with all of us
cooperating. It is not sufficient to blame MARC for being bad, or to
blame systems for not taking full advantage of MARC. We've got to do it
all together. As I've said before, I firmly believe that the disciplines
of cataloging, metadata, and systems design are converging into
something that must be treated as one unified discipline, not segmented.
Surely, individuals will still have expertise that can't span all of
that, but nobody can wall themselves off completely from the other
parts, and everybody's got to work together in a unified effort.
Jonathan
Hank Young wrote:
> I suppose part of the problem is that there a lot of people who have
> spent a lot of time developing MARC with end-users in mind, only to be
> stymied by end user systems that have never used MARC to its fullest
> advantage. This is seen as a failure of MARC when it is, in fact an
> evolution of the catalog. Early catalogs emulated card catalogs, then
> "second generation" catalogs came along and gave us keyword searching
> and the beginnings of customization by the library. Next there was a
> lot of discussion of end-user customization (a la My Yahoo! and similar
> services) but that did not give patrons what they wanted.
>
> So ... what is it patrons want? They want Lt. Uhura. They want to tell
> the computer what they want and they expect it to spit it out. NOW plz.
> No matter what they actually tell it. No matter whether the library has
> it or not. Anything less is deemed failure.
>
> So ... who has ideas on how we can succeed? If you see Sigourney
> Weaver, tell her I am waiting for her to translate the user's needs for
> the computer. [If you have not seen galaxy Quest, a spoof of Star Trek,
> I apologize].
>
> Hank Young (yes, Naomi and I are related)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Drew, Bill
> Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 4:33 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Death by enhancement: was WorldCat Local
>
> There is no need for the front end seen by the end-user to be the same
> as the "catalog" used internally to manage the library inventory. The
> library's MARC records are simply another silo of information. The
> problem is may librarians and libraries do not see it that way.
>
> Bill Drew
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri Apr 27 2007 - 08:01:20 EDT