Hiya,

I guess I'm the one who's got to step up to the self-slaughtering
altar, but the fact that a lot of our systems break or don't know how
to handle HTML is despicable. I'm sure you guys are familiar with RSS
/ Atom, and because in there we *expect* HTML and therefore make sure
our back-ends can grok it, it enhances the meta data *greatly*.

Don't think for a second that purity of the data format in any shape
or form is the definition of its usefulness. Mixed content models
might be complex to work with, but their value is immense. I can fully
understand *why* people say "don't do it", because, yes, it ups the
complexity, and perhaps with these dinosaur technologies like MARC and
our ILS's breaking under the pressure of more modern technologies
enforces it, I don't think we should shun it because of it.

If your back-end can't grok HTML, I'd suggest you fix it immediately!
If your ILS chokes on XML and / or HTML snippets, I suggest you
replace it. You seriously shouldn't allow this rigidity into your
infra-structure, and it's depressing to watch how we as complex users
of MARC don't dare to extend it to become a format that does what it
should and need to do.

Even *if* HTML in MARC records probably is a bad idea.


Regards,

Alex
-- 
 Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
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