XML for MARC

[Gerry Mckiernan]

_XML for MARC_ 

    Over the past several weeks, I am noticed more and more mention of XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, with many stating that it will be _        The Next Step_ in the evoluation of the Web and Web pages. I myself am just beginning to learn about it from journal articles, new monographs [We've ordered and are receiving all the major quality books on the topic here at ISU], and of course, Web sites. 

  To Quote:     'XML is a subset of SGML. XML is not a markup    language, as HTML is, but a meta-language that is capable of containing markup languages in the same way as SGML.    UnQuote 

   Quote "...the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), takes document markup to the next level, offering human-readable semantic markup, which is also machine-readable. As a result, XML makes it dramatically easier to develop and deploy new mission-specific markup, enabling the automation of the authoring, parsing, and processing of networked data." 

   UnQuote      For an excellent review article, a must-read is "X Marks the Spot: eXtensible Markup Language opens the door to a motherlode of automated Web applications' at  http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/xml/x-marks-the-spot.html 

   The relationship of XML to SGML prompted me to revisit the Library of Congress Web page on MARC [http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/] and to review an LC effort to convert MARC to SGML [For details, see [http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/  ; MARC DTDs (Document Type Definitions ] This in turn prompted thoughts about the conversion or mapping of MARC to XML, and  to consider all of the potential possibilities for enhanced access and navigation and presentation of MARC record data and the associated imnformation. 

    As Always, I would much appreciate any comments, questions, concerns, queries, contributions, citations, or critiques about the application of XML to MARC data, be they bibliographic records, Subject Authority Files, Name Authority Files, LCSH, etc. 

        Joy! 

Gerry McKiernan Curator, CyberStacks(sm) Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 

gerrymck at iastate.edu http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/ 

"The Best Way to Predict the Future is To Invent It!"           Attributed to Peter Drucker