Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> The tower of rigidness it turned into is now the tower of Babel for
> the library community,
Not sure if this is a fitting metaphor: MARC has become the very
language of catalogers almost the world over, across the barriers of
"natural" language! Any system with verbal tags couldn't achieve that,
and you also couldn't create a verbally coded alternative to beat MARC
because it couldn't beat its short-hand-like brevity as well as its
internationality.
> Ugh, and I don't know if this is
> salvageable.
>
Has anyone come up with a practicable alternative, together with an
economically viable migration path, including the rewiring of all
those brains?
OTOH, all systems being capable of exporting MARC, a thoroughly
convincing and comprehensive new solution shouldn't have too difficult a
time to penetrate the market. Why hasn't it happened yet? I'm not sure
inertia is the only answer.
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Jun 08 2010 - 09:10:50 EDT