I've written up a quick-and-dirty (well, except for the 'quick' part) ruby-marc reader class to read AlephSequential files as output from the Ex Libris Aleph system. If you don't know what that is, or why you would want it, thank your god and move on. Initial code is at https://github.com/billdueber/marc_alephsequential If there's any interest, I'll gemify it and/or start a discussion about whether or not to fold this into ruby-marc proper. Speed isn't too awful -- about 150% the speed of reading a marc-binary file with ruby-marc on my machine. Pull requests are *always *in fashion ("...at the Copa...") -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library