Harvey is right that we are working with some rather strict,
self-imposed constraints -- clearly ones that did not seem constraining
at the time that the MARC "instance" was developed from the full range
of Z39.2 possibilities.
As for options, I refer to my blog post:
http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2007/08/marcxchange.html
which I think gains us more than remaining with the Z39.2 structure, but
that would build on the data we have today. I'm not saying it's THE
answer, but it never hurts to consider the options.
and...
Hahn, Harvey wrote:
Since no known MARC records have a length anywhere
> near approaching the maximum 99999 value,
is unfortunately not true. When I was working on the UC MELVYL system,
there were libraries that had to truncate records from their databases
at the 99999 limit in order to export them in MARC. The internal record
format did not have the MARC limitations.
This is what makes XML so appealing -- you don't have to pre-determine
how big records can be, or how many fields can exist. When processing
article data from A&I vendors, we had to cut off the indexing of authors
at 100 per article -- yes, some articles (few, but some) had more than
100 authors. There's hardly limit you can imagine that someone will not
exceed. We humans are almost infinitely creative in that way.
kc
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Fri Aug 24 2007 - 17:51:26 EDT