[WEB4LIB] About MARC

[Jim Harold]

Hi Michael ....

Hmm. Very good question, but I would like to offer some insight after working in places that used MARC and did not use MARC.

MARC is complex, tedious, anal-retentive, and inflexible.  But it is for all of these reasons that I wish we were using were I am now.

For example, when our organization moved from MINISIS to BASIS as our DBMS, certain individuals here pushed database simplification.  

For example, one change approved was the merging of the serial title and serial part into one field (neither MINISIS or BASIS has sub-fields as MARC treats them so the part information was in a separate field).  Of course we have now already needed to isolate the series title to produce lists and we can no longer do that just by printing out the title series field data without the part information.  We had to right a script to isolate the title.  The interesting thing is that one the people who pushed for simplification was also the person who asked for the list of series titles.  They were made well aware of the problem once the lists were delivered.

So, my suggestion with you is stick with MARC.  However, if you need to exchange data with non-library institutions, you will need to either right scripts or purchase the correct software (if it is available) which will take MARC data and output it to various other database formats.

MARC is not easy but it is wonderful to have a system for structuring information.

Jim Harold
USAID/DEC

>>> "Michael Ming, Hung" <mmhung at hknet.com> 05/02/99 12:32PM >>>

why do we use MARC?
what is the importance of MARC?
where can i find the official site of MARC?
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michael hung   ICQ=6638008
SKH Bishop Mok Sau Tseng Secondary School, Librarian
HK Professional Teachers' Union, Teacher-librarians' Group, Chairman

Jesus Christ, is the same Yesterday and Today and Forever. ~Hebrew 13:8
Homepage = http://www.school.net.hk/~mmhung/ 
michael email: mmhung at school.net.hk [or] mmhung at hknet.com 
ida email: idachan2 at hknet.com                          ida & michael Hung
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