Bernhard Eversberg wrote:
<snip>
Weinheimer Jim wrote:
<snip>
MARC is very inflexible for this (I still maintain that it's because of
its ISO2709 foundation).
<
No!! MARC can very well be represented without the ISO2709 fuss.
MarcEdit, for example, converts losslessly between this representation:
=LDR 00532nam 2200205 45e0
=001 875208
=007 ta
=008 \\991231s1985\\\\n\\\\\\\\\\\\\\0000\ger\d
=010 \\$a
=020 \\$a0521221501
=050 \0$aPR2801. A2
=082 00$a822.3'3
=090 \\$a2650-2692
=100 1\$aShakespeare, William
=245 00$aAll's well that ends well$cWilliam Shakespeare
=260 \\$aCambridge :$bCambridge Univ. Pr.,$c1985
=300 \\$aXIII, 154 S.
=440 \4$aThe New Cambridge Shakespeare
=650 \0$adrama in English
=700 12$aFraser, Russell
and the dreaded ISO2709 contortion. Any OCLC editing screen
represents MARC with no trace of ISO to be seen. It is no requirement at
all, it is just that all those tools being used, including VuFind, fail
miserably if they aren't fed the arcane but technically completely
unnecessary ISO2709.
</snip>
What I meant by inflexible is the trouble MARC has for importing information from other places. For example, if the above record had a lot of analytics, with flexible formats, they could be more easily imported, e.g. (making this up)
=505
<bag1>
<name>Smith, John</name>
<title>Act I of All's well that ends well</title>
<note>Originally presented as a paper at...</note>
</bag1>
<bag2>
<name>Smith, Susan</name>
<title>Act I, scene 2 of All's well that ends well</title>
<note>Originally published in ...</note>
</bag2>
When we add to this scenario information feeding in from all over, such as the example of John Smith's form of name being taken through a URI, or imported links to the conference, or other possibilities such as RSS feed updates, and I can't imagine what else right now, MARC has problems. The above example cannot be done with the current MARC format.
(I'd better be careful of that! Someone will probably show that it can be done, but I will say that it's not worth spending the time on cobbling together an old format when there are too many other options out there)
I am sure there are many other difficult points in MARC as well. One area where MODS is definitely superior to MARC is in the multiple areas for different kinds of dates, e.g. dateIssued, dateCreated, dateModified, etc.
Still, these are all issues that take place behind the scenes. There would be little or no reason to change anyone's cataloging interface very much at all.
James Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
Received on Tue Apr 20 2010 - 06:32:57 EDT