There are things you'd want to do with data in a MARC record _other_ 
than display it in HTML. Maybe you want to send it to someone in email, 
or a txt message. Embedding html in your marc is going to make this more 
difficult than it should be.

Alexander Johannesen wrote:
> 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
> --- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
> ------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---
>
>