MARC is a very annoying data format, no question. And it's true that
when it was designed, catalog cards were still state of the art.
From a teensy bit of searching on the 'net: the MARC pilot project
final report was published in 1968.
(http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED029663&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED029663
).
It was apparently designed to work well on tapes (as a backup medium,
and for data transfer). It predates relational databases. It was at
least timely in the sense that it was pretty much universally adopted,
at least in USA/Canada, as far as I know.
On Jun 26, 2008, at 5:46 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
On Jun 25, 2008, at 7:27 PM, Hahn, Harvey wrote:
I appreciate that MARC is really a data structure. Leader.
Directory. Data. Thus using alpha characters for field names is
legitimate. This demonstrates the flexibility of MARC as a data
structure. Considering the environment when it was designed, it is a
marvelous beast. Sequential in nature to accommodating tape.
Complete with redundant error-checking devices with the leader, the
directory, and end-of-field, -subfield, and -record characters.
Exploits the existing character set. It is nice that fields do not
have to be in any particular order. It is nice that specific
characters as specific position have specific meanings. For the
time, MARC exploited the existing environment to the fullest.
"Applause!" A computer science historian, if there ever will be such
a thing, would have a field day with MARC.
But now-a-days, these things are just weird. A novelty. I'm getting
tired of it. Worse, many of us in Library Land confuse MARC as a
data structure with bibliographic description. We mix presentation
and content and think we are doing MARC. Moreover, I don't
appreciate ILS vendors who "extend and enhance" the "standard"
making it difficult to use "standard" tools against their data. This
just makes my work unnecessarily difficult. Why do we tolerate such
things?
I won't even get into the fact that MARC was designed to enable the
printing of catalog cards and the profession has gone on to use it
(poorly) in so many other ways. If we in Library Land really want to
live and work in an Internet environment, then we have some serious
evolution to go through! The way we encode and make available our
data is just one example. I feel like a dinosaur.
Whew!
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dam
Naomi Dushay
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
