Hey guys, have you heard of this: http://www.greenstone.org/ ?
Yup :). A popular alternative, like EPrints, DSpace, Fedora.
None of them uses MARC to store bibliographic data though...
Back in 2003 this was the main CDS feature that won our hearts.
Nowadays though, I personally feel MARC to be very restrictive for
many new types of material. And although (from what I see) CERN uses a
heavily modified version of UKMARC, other institutions (like us here
at AUTH) when they see 'MARC' they want to stick to the 'standard'.
Period. Which leads to various 'mods' in order to make both librarians
AND users happy...
I begin to think that a DC-like, more 'relaxed' standard is the way to
go in the future...
We have other (smaller) libraries here, that have setup local EPrints
servers that are easier to install/manage/configure but are 'toys'
when compared to Invenio :).
I must say though that I envy them when it's time to create a new
collection... Other installations can use any custom xml variable to
describe any datafield they need and need not worry about the meaning
of fields/subfields etc since Dublin Core is less restrictive than
MARC...
Best regards,
Theodoros
