Sorry to repeat this to so many lists, but the most recent NISO newsletter:
http://www.niso.org/publications/newsline/2011/newslinenov2011.html
makes the case that NISO may be the more appropriate body for the
development of the future data format for libraries. Quoting from the
message by Todd Carpenter:
"The MARC standards office at LC is adeptly led and they have the best
of intentions, with a goal of trying to represent and serve all that
use this important format. However, there is a fine line between
leadership and control. Hopefully, LC is willing to lead while letting
the broader community control, as messy as that process might be.
The process for moving MARC into today's information environment is
important, as noted above. Wouldn't the process be better served by
utilizing the existing and open standards development processes
already in place that have served our community so well in so many
areas?"
I had been about to post a response to the plan suggesting that there
are a number of non-library standards bodies that would have a lot to
contribute: in particular, W3C would be important, since LC feels that
RDF (a W3C standard) should be used (and I believe that library data
is a good test case for the Semantic Web standards that exist today).
NISO by its nature covers a broader constituency than LC, and, most
importantly, is the venue that gathers together the vendors that serve
libraries and create library systems.
No standards process is perfect, and none are particularly rapid.
Broad participation and the widest variety of use cases for the data
will assure an outcome that serves the greatest number of potential
users.
kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
Received on Wed Nov 02 2011 - 15:21:17 EDT