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
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