MJ Suhonos wrote:
>>> There's the problem: cataloguers are *forced* to learn how to "talk MARC" and thus become superhuman. MODS, in contrast, is readable by "mere" humans. Why do we require cataloguers who aren't doing under-the-hood system maintenance to understand MARC?
>> No, to learn MARC does not consist of learning all the numbers and
>> codes, that's rather trivial.
>
> Maybe for you! It's overwhelmingly imposing for me, which is why I do to great lengths to avoid it.
>
No, my reaction when first confronted with MARC was exactly the same.
There's a very good introduction, "Understanding MARC". Very
illuminating and, while it is still around, indispensable reading.
http://www.loc.gov/marc/umb/
>
> I agree that simply being able to read MODS as verbal text isn't sufficient for good-quality data; but verbal cues are much easier to mentally map to the semantic definitions than numeric ones — if it's all the same to computers, don't we want to make it easier for mere humans to work with our records?
We want to make things easier, right, but that doesn't mean we should
give up presicion. It just means we must be able to produce, for
example, RIS data as well (arguably the most widely known format
because Endnote and others use it).
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Apr 20 2010 - 10:25:27 EDT