Eric Lease Morgan schrieb:
>
> IMHO, this is EXACTLY correct. Its is the ISBD/AACR2 sort of stuff that is so field specific and inconsistently applied that it is almost impossible to parse MARC, MARCXML, or MODS without going through a million conditional statements.
>
Agreed. Data entry practices and standards have to change regardless of
the formats actually used. More often than not, inconsistencies result
from differences in the ways the ILS's index and display the data, or
what peculiarities a library wanted in the layout of their cards.
Catalogers must become more technically aware of the consequences.
But even so, one doesn't see any agreement at all about what
format to introduce. Internally, systems can use anything they
want, but for exchange a uniformly understood format is
indispensable, and it should be free of oddities in punctuation
and whatever. However, more than one communication format can
be accomodated and offered to the public, as long as tools
for conversion are available.
The recent releases of "open data", BTW, are all non-MARC but differing
widely and wildly from each other...
And Alex wrote:
> It does surprise me somewhat that all you smart folks don't get
> together and create a framework for washing and cleaning up MARC
> records.
Very odd indeed. What's MARBI thinking?
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Apr 20 2010 - 08:45:49 EDT