Bernhard Eversberg wrote: <snip> Another reason why I think that not MARC is any of our troubles but the glacial reluctance against using MARC intelligently or at least in more reasonable and elegant ways. This would include abolishment of ISO2709, without which MARC wouldn't lose any of its potential. Although Jim Weinheimer seems to believe MARC can't live without it. At least, it is very safe to say that XML is not an antidote to ISO2709, nor even a viable way to escape it. But overkill it is, for the actual ecosystem we have to cope with. </snip>
I guess I am being completely unclear. MARC *definitely can* live outside of ISO2709. The first step is to overcome the limitations of ISO2709. ISO2709 is the language of the traditional library. XML is the language of the web. Switching just to MARCXML would be a tremendous step forward for libraries into the web, if for nothing else, so that we could have an infinite number of "subfield codes". We just have to get rid of the "roundtripability feature" of MARCXML, which is actually not a feature but a prison cell. Of course, MARCXML doesn't solve all the problems, but one big one will be out of the way. Plus, it could be done in such a way that catalogers probably wouldn't even notice a difference. James Weinheimer j.weinhei...@aur.edu Director of Library and Information Services The American University of Rome via Pietro Roselli, 4 00153 Rome, Italy voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258 fax-011 39 06 58330992 First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/ Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
