I'm also an infrequent poster, and I agree with 3/4 of Ted's comment below.
On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Ted Koppel <tpk_at_auto-graphics.com> wrote:
> Observation 1) A huge majority of the discussions evolve (or perhaps
> I should say - devolve) into a whinefest about how bad MARC is. OK,
> we get it. MARC isn't a tool for the '10s. What the discussion can't
> seem to do is move on. Rather than dwell on the inadequacies of MARC,
> why not raise the conversation to one of problem solving? Maybe in
> posit some theoretical approaches? When was the last time that someone
> compared Primo to its discover layers? Why are Endeca and AquaBrowser
> (just to name two) so seldom mentioned?
I'm all in favor of adding some problem-solving to the complaining,
but I don't think discovery layers are the right focus of
problem-solving. As long as MARC is the underlying standard, you're
still limited in what you can do in a discovery layer.
The problem-solving I'd like to see is, how do we move the library
world past MARC? Between the legacy records and the legacy software
and processes built up around MARC, a shift is going to be a massive
undertaking that's likely to face a lot of resistance and cost a lot
of money. I'm not whining and I'm not being fatalistic -- I think it
can be accomplished. But if we're going to try to solve any problems
on this list, I think that's one of the big problems that needs to be
tackled.
Julia
*********************************************
Julia Bauder
Data Services Librarian
Grinnell College Libraries
1111 Sixth Ave.
Grinnell, IA 50112
641-269-4431
Received on Tue Jun 29 2010 - 10:15:40 EDT