Hi Tim,

> A lot of the discussion so far seems to have missed the opportunity to
> find out exactly what you are hoping to accomplish.

The discussion itself was what I was looking for.  I'm actually fairly aware of the problems inherent in this practice (although not nearly as eloquent nor as thorough as some of the thread responders).  What I was hoping to accomplish was to convince some cataloging decision makers here that our current practice of including HTML mark-up in MARC records is not a good idea and that we should stop doing it.  I was looking to the discussion to either buttress my arguments with expert opinion or get a real convincing reason why my rationale was not valid.

> My first question is: What is the image an image of?

It's a bit ironic perhaps, but most of the images are essentially *text* -- e.g. the words "UTA Plus OffCampus" in a gif [1].

> Where is the actual image going to be stored?

The image example above was stored on our OPAC server.  With a new version of the OPAC, the path to images changed, and 250,000+ holdings records needed to be edited.  This new OPAC version is more flexible and it would probably be possible to add the images we currently have encoded via HTML tags in the MARC holdings record, to the OPAC record view on the fly.

-- Michael

[1] http://pulse.uta.edu/images/offcampPulse.gif

# Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
# University of Texas at Arlington
# 817-272-5326 office
# 817-688-1926 mobile
# [log in to unmask]
# http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On 
> Behalf Of Tim Hodson
> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 3:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] HTML mark-up in MARC records
> 
> Michael,
> 
> A lot of the discussion so far seems to have missed the opportunity to
> find out exactly what you are hoping to accomplish. (unless I missed
> that post :) ). And to perhaps suggest alternative ways of doing that.
> 
> My first question is: What is the image an image of?
> 
> This is shortly followed by several more....
> What is the name of the image (perhaps it is an ISBN)?
> Where is the actual image going to be stored?
> Does it actually make any sense to embed the URI of an image 
> in the data?
> What happens if the image name changes, or becomes unavailable?
> What happens if the marc record is exported/consumed by 
> another system?
> (setting aside completey the issue of markup within markup discussed
> elswhere in this thread)
> 
> If this is simply a way to get an image into the catalogue display, I
> can think that there might be better ways.
> For example Juice [1] which could allow you to dynamically load an
> image (from a suitably maintained source) based on an identifier
> somewhere within the page.
> 
> Best,
> Tim
> 
> [1] http://code.google.com/p/juice-project/
> 
> ----------------------------------------------
> Tim Hodson
> http://informationtakesover.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 2009/6/21 Doran, Michael D <[log in to unmask]>:
> > Is anybody else embedding HTML mark-up code in MARC records 
> [1]?  We're currently including an "<img>" tag in some MARC 
> Holdings records in the 856z [2].   I'm inclined to think 
> that HTML mark-up does not belong anywhere in MARC records, 
> but am looking for other opinions (preferably with the 
> reasoning behind the opinions), both pro and con.
> >
> > I'm asking on code4lib as well as the voyager-l list in 
> order to get a mix of ILS-specific and ILS-agnostic opinions 
> (I'm not on any cataloging lists, or would probably ask 
> there, too).  I tried googling this topic, but couldn't find 
> anything of consequence; so if I've missed something there, 
> and you could point me to it, I'd be obliged.
> >
> > -- Michael
> >
> > [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML
> >
> > [2] http://www.loc.gov/marc/holdings/hd856.html
> >
> > # Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
> > # University of Texas at Arlington
> > # 817-272-5326 office
> > # 817-688-1926 mobile
> > # [log in to unmask]
> > # http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
> >
>