Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>
> Rubbish. With the XML standard alone (say, version 4) you can create a
> complete emulated Topic Map of any field you require,
Is that really what we need? Ontologies are field-specific, but
our standards have to be comprehensive. As far as RDA is concerned and
MARC, they are not dealing with anything that could be remotely
called a topic map, they are just describing resources. Topic maps
are certainly wonderful but they come on top of that.
>
>> Here's the "Big Picture": http://kensall.com/big-picture/bigpix22.html
>
> Wow, look how many library standards there are in there ... *grin*
>
But that's the point! Library stuff would have to come on top of all
that riffraff. Nothing of it is already there, no-one's done a
convincing job on that basis.
> I'm not proposing to use the full XML stack (and the "Big Picture" is
> seriously overkill and overlap en masse), but just the basic XML
> premise. Here's an example ;
>
> <record xml:lang="no">...</record>
>
> Already here I know what language the record is encoded in.
>
So does LA=no;...
>
> Yup, everybody does XML. Only libraries do MARC or MARCXML. Go figure.
>
I figure it is an octopus. Or an emperor with new clothes so heavy he
has a hard time moving. But give us a model that works, that we can use
right away and clearly does a better job than what we have and you win
me over.
>
>> There are more alternatives, but for these, too, I wonder why no-one
>> has come up with an approach to relieve our calamity.
>
> Because the library world is seeped in MARC, and you need balls the
> size of Alaska to change it. No, you don't need money, just balls,
> male, female, doesn't matter.
>
What about LibraryThing? Are they doing XML? I mean they do lots of
things much differently, and successfuly, they are even about to rig up
a new classification. Using XML?
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Aug 25 2008 - 09:18:46 EDT