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On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Alexander Johannesen < [log in to unmask]> wrote: > Lots of people around the library world infra-structure will think > that since your data is now in XML it has taken some important step > towards being inter-operable with the rest of the world, that library > data now is part of the real world in *any* meaningful way, but this > is simply demonstrably deceivingly not true. Here, I think you're guilty of radically underestimating "lots of people around the library world." No one thinks MARC is a good solution to our modern problems, and no one who actually knows what MARC is has trouble understanding MARC-XML as an XML serialization of the same old data -- certainly not anyone capable of meaningful contribution to work on an alternative. You seem to presuppose that there's an enormous pent-up energy poised to sweep in changes to an obviously-better data format, and that the existence of MARC-XML somehow defuses all that energy. The truth is that a high percentage of people that work with MARC data actively think about (or curse) things that are wrong with it and gobs and gobs of ridiculously-smart people work on a variety of alternate solutions (not the least of which is RDA) and get their organizations to spend significant money to do so. The problem we're dealing with is *hard*. Mind-numbingly hard. The library world has several generations of infrastructure built around MARC (by which I mean AACR2), and devising data structures and standards that are a big enough improvement over MARC to warrant replacing all that infrastructure is an engineering and political nightmare. I'm happy to take potshots at the RDA stuff from the sidelines, but I never forget that I'm on the sidelines, and that the people active in the game are among the best and brightest we have to offer, working on a problem that invariably seems more intractable the deeper in you go. If you think MARC-XML is some sort of an actual problem, and that people just need to be shouted at to realize that and do something about it, then, well, I think you're just plain wrong. -Bill- -- Bill Dueber Library Systems Programmer University of Michigan Library