That would make sense if you want to actually change the HTTP/web 
standards and establish new conventions. :)

Me, I don't need to fix the internet right now.  The application/foo+xml 
convention is pretty well established, and even specified in 
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3023.txt  (thanks anarchivist!).

It will work good enough for many purposes, as it does for 
application/rss+xml etc.  But yeah, this +xml convention it's not as 
flexible as you might like, it can't handle everything in the web/xml 
world, but fixing that means changing/fixing/establishing new 
standards/conventions, and, for the moment, that's 'out of my pay 
grade', just getting application/mods+xml and application/marc+xml 
registered would be good enough, and in keeping with that RFC and 
currently accepted conventions.

Jonathan

Smith,Devon wrote:
> Rather than defining new media types, I was thinking it would make more sense to add a "schema" and/or "namespace" parameter to text/xml or application/xml. Then you could use those types and append the parameter to indicate the specific structure of the content.
>
> Just a though,
> Devon
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries on behalf of Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Wed 2/4/2009 11:01 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] MIME Type for MARC, Mods, etc.?
>
> If anyone does want to work on it, I'd be happy to help. Maybe I'll
> contact clay.
>
> The most immediate and clear need I see is for application/marc+xml and
> application/mods.
>
> MADS could be useful, I dunno. Not sure if a seperate one would be
> needed for MFHD?
>
> With all the effort on making web-friendly APIs for library
> bibliographic control systems (DLF task force, jangle, etc.), having
> MIME types for these formats will make everything flow much more
> smoothly and clearly.
>
> Of course, even without them being registered, we can use
> application/x-marc+xml and application/x-mods right away, which is
> probably what I'll do.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Ross Singer wrote:
>   
>> His point, though, is that you can't tell the format being used until
>> you open the document and try to negotiate it that way.
>>
>> So if you think in terms of content-negotiation and a particular
>> resource is available in EAD, MARC XML and Dubin Core, you have no way
>> of expressing that.
>>
>> Jonathan, this has come up before.  Ed Summers and I kicked around the
>> idea of registering these but never got anywhere (mainly because
>> neither one of us was really interested in writing the RFCs).  Clay
>> Redding might be doing something, as I recall...
>>
>> -Ross.
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Ethan Gruber <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the mime type for MARC-XML and MODS be
>>> application/xml, like every other xml file?  As for MARC-binary, I can't
>>> say.  I don't have any of those files handy.
>>>
>>> Ethan
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I am actually rather shocked that it seems that MARC-XML, MODS,
>>>> MARC21-binary, do not have registered Internet Content Types (aka MIME
>>>> types).
>>>>
>>>> Am I missing something, or is this really so?
>>>>
>>>> Anyone know what the process is for registering such?  Anyone want to help
>>>> try to do that? I guess we'd probably have to talk to the standards
>>>> organizations for each of those types, rather than doing it independently?
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>         
>>     
>
>