Excellent post Eric!
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Thu 9/20/2007 10:39 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] data vs "data structure"
On Sep 20, 2007, at 5:25 PM, Rinne, Nathan (ESC) wrote:
>> But we've had this discussion so many times before, we just
>> keep going round.
>
> Is there any way to make all of this more concrete? If it is not
> the content of a typical MARC record that is outdated or has
> outlived its usefulness, but rather the "data structure"
> (container), what exactly does this mean? How can we map it to
> make it easier to understand?
I will take a stab at answering this question.
Here in the United States, the current data structure of our catalogs
is MARC, and considering today's computing environment, MARC is a
very poor container. I will list at least three reasons why:
1. MARC has a number of arbitrary limitations - Metadata regarding
information resources can include things like titles, authors,
physical descriptions, all types of notes, added entries,
authorities, controlled vocabularies, pointers to locations, etc. The
total sum of this information, counted in bytes, should not have any
limitations. If I want to use a megabyte of data to describe a book,
then I should be allowed to do so. Unfortunately, by definition, a
MARC record can be no larger than 99,999 characters. This is true
because the first five characters of every MARC record is a left-
hand, zero-padded integer defining the length of the record. If the
fi
Received on Fri Sep 21 2007 - 06:52:38 EDT