I agree. Were I to wear such a shirt, it would make catalogers think:
1) I don't respect them,
2) I haven't taken the time to try and learn what's in a MARC record,
and am not interested in doing so either.
Or rather, it will confirm their assumptions that these things are
already true. I am more interested in developing a better working
relationship with catalogers not based on these sorts of assumptions.
Jonathan
Daniel Chudnov wrote:
On Jan 26, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Roy Tennant wrote:
Those of you (are there any?) who can't or don't want to login to see
berick's response should know that it is:
aren't we all morons in the face of MARC?
Why so negative toward a spec that's served our community for nigh
unto forty years? I'd much rather see something fun or silly and not
disparaging of anything and would vote against this if we were set up
to vote against something. I mean, wouldn't you really then mean for
it to say:
"...in the face of MARC? By which, of course, we mean MARC with ISBD
punctuation and AACR2 rules, the combination of which might make
sense still to some members of our community but to us snarky geek
types is really quite difficult to work with, so much so that we love
dropping metaphorical bombs on it even while we don't really have a
decent solution for replacing it quite yet hence the insecurity we
share in great evidence by mocking it on a conference t-shirt."
For good or ill, our profession is invested in MARC, and to parade
around in clothes disparaging it (or in a shirt mocking any
particular individual, which was, apparently, my first annual t-shirt
suggestion objection, last year) seems like the wrong impression to
give. Just because we blow off steam sometimes by acting like junior
high schoolers on-channel doesn't mean we have to document similar
behavior on clothing we'll all wear to other conferences.
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
