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MARC is a very annoying data format, no question. And it's true that when it was designed, catalog cards were still state of the art. From a teensy bit of searching on the 'net: the MARC pilot project final report was published in 1968. (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED029663&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED029663 ). It was apparently designed to work well on tapes (as a backup medium, and for data transfer). It predates relational databases. It was at least timely in the sense that it was pretty much universally adopted, at least in USA/Canada, as far as I know. On Jun 26, 2008, at 5:46 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote: > On Jun 25, 2008, at 7:27 PM, Hahn, Harvey wrote: > > I appreciate that MARC is really a data structure. Leader. > Directory. Data. Thus using alpha characters for field names is > legitimate. This demonstrates the flexibility of MARC as a data > structure. Considering the environment when it was designed, it is a > marvelous beast. Sequential in nature to accommodating tape. > Complete with redundant error-checking devices with the leader, the > directory, and end-of-field, -subfield, and -record characters. > Exploits the existing character set. It is nice that fields do not > have to be in any particular order. It is nice that specific > characters as specific position have specific meanings. For the > time, MARC exploited the existing environment to the fullest. > "Applause!" A computer science historian, if there ever will be such > a thing, would have a field day with MARC. > > But now-a-days, these things are just weird. A novelty. I'm getting > tired of it. Worse, many of us in Library Land confuse MARC as a > data structure with bibliographic description. We mix presentation > and content and think we are doing MARC. Moreover, I don't > appreciate ILS vendors who "extend and enhance" the "standard" > making it difficult to use "standard" tools against their data. This > just makes my work unnecessarily difficult. Why do we tolerate such > things? > > I won't even get into the fact that MARC was designed to enable the > printing of catalog cards and the profession has gone on to use it > (poorly) in so many other ways. If we in Library Land really want to > live and work in an Internet environment, then we have some serious > evolution to go through! The way we encode and make available our > data is just one example. I feel like a dinosaur. > > Whew! > > -- > Eric Lease Morgan > University of Notre Dam Naomi Dushay [log in to unmask]