MARC is a pain to work with; this is a truism which most of us should be 
familiar with.

Blindly moving away from MARC is not the solution, indeed history 
suggests that path leads us back to an even more complex version of MARC.

MARC is complex (and thus a pain) for three reasons: (a) the inherent 
complexity of the bibliographic content it deals with; (b) the fact that 
there are many MARC-using groups who have different sets of motivations 
and ideas as to what MARC is for; and (c) MARC's long and complicated 
history.

Throwing out MARC doesn't solve any of these except the last, and then 
only if you throw away all your data and make no efforts to migrate it. 
Obtaining new data from a consortia or company almost certainly buys you 
not only MARC's history, but some tasty local decisions on top.

----

A far more productive discussion is to explore potential replacements 
for MARC. This, of course, is only productively conducted with a sound 
understanding of the causes of the complexity in MARC. I'll leave it to 
the reader to consider whether various proponents' arguments are 
persuasive on this point.

cheers
stuart
-- 
Stuart Yeates
Library Technology Services http://www.victoria.ac.nz/library/