Hello,
Jacobs, Jane W <Jane.W.Jacobs_at_queenslibrary.org> wrote:
> I'm not much of a programmer, but using the open-source Perl module,
> developed by REAL programmers (really GOOD programmers, I would add.)
> I've managed to pull out pretty much everything what I needed.
I think we're at some semantic incompatible levels in this discussion.
Let's try to sort it out ;
1. Pulling stuff out of MARC *is* easy.
2. Making sense of what you pull out is *damn* hard.
The entire MARC bibliographic recordset (your local, a national body,
or all international records put together) are hopelessly untyped,
denormalised, and lack any structure that can be trusted. AARC2
especially have screwed this up further by being based on human
interaction with the data. Even RDA fails miserably in this notion
(and I'm not the first to mention how especially bad that was at the
time). Every MARC record is filled to the brim with the notion that a
*human* is to use it.
And that's just the problem, right there; MARC didn't evolve to be
computer understandable (as opposed to computer *readable*, which,
frankly, gives you very little), it rather perfected the human
reliance on it to perform.
> If I were a real programmer and didn't want to dip into the Perl module
> to grab what I wanted, I would probably want to use XML, there are
> already programs to convert MARC to MARC-XML. MARC-XML is pretty
> verbose and cludgey in terms of taking up space on your servers but if
> you have plenty server space to stash it on it's no problem. Grabbing
> things out of XML, even the cludgey MARC kind is quite easy, as long as
> you know where you're grabbing from.
MARCXML is evil! It's the work of the devil! It distorts librarians
minds into thinking they've entered some kind of internet-age, that
they are web-ready, web-savvy, fit for interoperability and ready for
the future.
Stay away from MARCXML! Shun it! Throw it away! It's eeeeeeeeeevil!
> Ironically those who have cataloging/bibliographic knowledge lack
> computing knowledge/server space. Those who have computing
> knowledge/server space probably lack cataloging/bibliographic knowledge.
> Catch-22!
I'm not convinced, nor do I see the relevance. If you ask a computer
savvy guy "what's the best way to store this complex data", the answer
would not be MARC with AARC2, nor denormalised records in a database.
And if you asked a cataloger about the best way to record a complex
title, it would not be a simple title field with a possible sub-title.
No, the problem isn't the jobs or complexities of such themselves, but
the fact that they suck at working together! For too many years in the
library world the complex task of software engineering has been left
to Bob who used to be a librarian for some special collection who's
meddled in HTML on the side for his cousins soccer team website, and
"yeah, I can look at it." It's only been the last 10 years or so that
software engineers have filled librarian positions (but I won't go
into rant-mode about how they're still regarded as second-class
librarian citizens once in place)
Do you know what I think they major problem is? Lack of knowledge
management. No idea about digital persistent identification. No
subject-centricity. No understanding of semantics in data modeling. No
clue about ontologies, inferencing, guides by analogy, no real
knowledge about collection management ( ... wait for it ... ) with
multiple hooks and identities, no serious *want* to learn these
things, and definitly no budget if they did. None of these things are
wrapped up in any layer of the libraries. Sure, there's the odd person
who knows a thing or two about the various subjects, but they never
seem to come together (NLA's Judith is an exception, too bad she's
retiring) in a way that seriously transform the direction libraries
take in terms of KM. They are still just too much of a bunch of
library card collectors.
Ok, going back to my cave now.
Regards,
Alex
--
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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Received on Mon Sep 21 2009 - 19:16:06 EDT