Roy Tennant

1
MARC, XML and FRBR Oh My!

• Roy Tennant

escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/presentations/2004
tla/
2
(No Transcript)
3
What I Really Think of MARC

• A crowning achievement
• A foundation that enabled all kinds of wonderful
  events
• Inexpensive cataloging
• Union catalogs
• World-renowned bibliographic utilities
• A technology that is outliving its logical
  lifespan
• but that can die of old age rather than murder

4
A New Bibliographic Infrastructure

• Without preconceptions, what do we really need?
• We need more than a format, and rules for using
  that format
• We need an infrastructure that will enable us to
  do many things we havent even imagined yet

5
General Infrastructure Requirements

• Versatility
• Extensibility
• Openness and Transparency
• Low Threshold, High Ceiling
• Cooperative Management

6
General Infrastructure Requirements

• Modularity
• Hierarchy
• Granularity
• Graceful in failure

7
Specific Infrastructure Requirements

• Bibliographic schemata
• Application Rules
• Crosswalks
• Best Practices
• Tool Sets
• Enrichment Services
• A Transfer Schema

8
MARC
ONIX
Dublin Core
VRA Core
9
METS
MARC
ONIX
Dublin Core
VRA Core
10
METS

• Metadata Encoding and Transmission Schema
• Cooperatively developed by the Library of
  Congress and the Digital Library Federation
• An XML wrapper for various metadata packages,
  as well as component files or the internal
  structure of a file
• Increasingly used as an all-purpose metadata
  package for digital objects

11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Challenges

• Adapting to a diversity of record formats
• Crosswalking and Merging
• System migration
• Staff retooling
• Your favorite challenge here

15
Is Changing Worth It?

• We will be able to encompass more information
  from more sources
• We will be able to do more things for more people
  and purposes
• We will grow to meet our opportunities rather
  than allow our challenges to defeat us
• Only by recreating our foundational
  infrastructure can we overcome our challenges and
  exploit our opportunities with vision and
  effectiveness

16
XML

• The single most important development for
  libraries since the Internet
• Already an important part of our infrastructure,
  but soon will be ubiquitous
• Information transfer formats
• Interface control
• Software-to-software services
• Increasingly, the way things get done!

17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
FRBR Challenges

• Under which conditions do we merge record
  displays?
• Catalog redesign
• Services redesign (e.g., Interlibrary Loan)

21

• Toto, were not in Kansas anymore!