20.01.2011 09:33, Weinheimer Jim:
I am completely confused here. My original contention in this thread was that MARCXML is *not* a perfect solution, but still represents one small, but important, step in the direction libraries need to go, and can be implemented relatively easily.
And that ease spells trouble and thus should make us feel uneasy. Here's why: Earlier, Jim cited the Thomale article: http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/3832 Jason Thomale: Interpreting MARC: Where’s the Bibliographic Data? And in it, there's this most important statement: "MARC is, at its heart, a data format built to contain catalog records; bibliographic items are described via the catalog records rather than directly via the structured MARC data. Understanding and internalizing this leads us to the insight: if we think of those catalog records as structured documents rather than as data records, then MARC has as much in common with a textual markup language (such as SGML or HTML) as it does with what we might consider to be 'structured data'." And in fact, XML (an SGML incarnation!) was designed as a textual markup system, not as a database syntax. So, using it for bibliographic data, would perpetuate that historic misconception. In the light of this, what we need is a real data format. It may look not all that different from MARC, but it needs to be understood in a markedly different way (and RDA supports this view more than AACR2 in that it clearly leaves textual display (ISBD) outside the rules). What we do not need, however, is an RDB sort of format, consisting of a set of interrelated tables. This seems to be what Thomale understands best. And for many developers, RDB is synonymous with "database". And that's the other trap into which we ought not fall. A true format must, for one thing, make it a snap to extract the "title" of the piece represented, unambiguously and independent of context inside the record that only a human reader can unravel. OTOH, it will never be easy to say and pin down what the title of a thing is, no matter what syntax you use to record it. In MARC, the 245 is the most confounded element - no, textual paragraph. B.Eversberg
