The important post from Karen Coyle’s blog I urged you to consider last class. Please if you do not know who Karen Coyle is look something up and learn about her work.
XML and Library Data Future
There is sometimes the assumption that the future data carrier for library data will be XML…
ps.. Might choose to update this blog title to Urge you to consider.
There is still a part of me that believes that MARC needs to fade away with the cards it used to encode. Yes, XML can’t do what MARC does. This likely results from it being a different manner of coding. Should XML replace MARC? I’m not sure. But I do think that *something* needs to replace MARC.
Is it valid to want to maintain the disparate tenor of the tagging structure to MARC over other more ‘flat file’ systems.
For a lively and deep conversation on XML and MARC (especially re: how MARC needs to be replaced or modified), see/subscribe to:
http://sun8.loc.gov/listarch/bibframe.html
This month’s discussion is very information about the strengths and weakness of MARC.
MARC is a dinosaur, but it still works as people have worked around it. I still don’t get why librarians hang on to it for dear life, why have they not created something else since the 60’s??? I know that XML is flexible but the way librarians are using it doesn’t reflect why it was created…sometimes it seems that it is like a round peg being forced into a square hole. Just my 2 cents!