>> Google is
>> serious about books and tries to fix the meta data problem (as the
>> library world doesn't seem to want to help),
On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 12:09, Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_biblio.tu-bs.de> wrote:
> Obviously, there's help from OCLC.
I know other national libraries have helped too, by giving them meta
data in a watered-down format (can't recall what it's called).
> They, however, are doing much less
> than they conceivably could because they always fear for their income
> which is from the selling of records to their members.
Of course they fear it; their business model is incompatible with the
future. Better to close their eyes than to change anything.
> Most librarians would be perfectly willing to do that, I think.
Hmm, I'm not convinced. There's certainly forces within those
libraries who understand the importance and have the willingness to do
so, but I'm not convinced the management at most bigger libraries
would venture down this path, especially not as OCLC or LOC aren't
doing it. "Surely, if they don't do it, it must be wrong." :(
> http://www.hathitrust.org/
Looks interesting.
> There is as of yet no accepted and widely known standard for
> bibliographic metadata other than MARC.
Hmm, that depends on what you mean by "bibliographic meta data",
because as far as I know, DC is widely used (DC is though the biggest
blunder ever, the biggest opportunity the library world has ever
missed!), as well as a multitude of big and small formats that have
bibliographic elements to it. Google's got one, Amazon's got one, I've
got one, you can use Atom / RSS for it, microformats ... depends.
> The world at large is
> much more likely to follow Google than libraries when it comes
> to standards. Look at systems that provide and exchange bibliographic
> metadata: the only thing they have in common is that they are all
> completely idiosyncratic. Except the MARC world. And this world can
> very well go on using MARC internally, if only they provide services
> that give users what they want - but currently there is not, as I said,
> the one or predominant standard they would all want (and know how to
> use).
Oh, the Google API is what they want. It isn't what the *library
world* wants, but as they can't provide what the world wants, the
world invents their own. That's evolution.
Alex
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Received on Mon Sep 29 2008 - 06:18:37 EDT