[Web4lib] MARC strictness

[Walt.Crawford at rlg.org]

Those are really interesting comments. I don't find much to disagree with.
Yes, I guess a spec and a template are pretty much the same thing. (Ours is
probably one of the more elaborate...)

As for the lack of a secure/always-working way to parse first name from
last name in x00 fields (100, 700, etc.): You get no disagreement here.
(Usually "take the portion of the $a subfield that follows the first comma
and precedes a second comma, if present, and treat that as the first name"
will work. Sometimes it won't, and when it doesn't, it really looks stupid.
Albeit not as stupid as most non-bibliographic databases, which cheerfully
assume that initial articles are part of the sorting string. My MusicMatch
"database" at home has a lot of stuff in the range beginning "Th")

Then there's 773$g, which for those of us who actually store data in
MARC-equivalent form and support OpenURL and bibliography-software export
is a particular bane: "Let's smoosh the year, volume, issue, and pagination
for an article into one subfield with no real rules for how it is to be
entered." Humans can usually separate out the pieces pretty well. Writing a
concise algorithm to do so by computer with 100% accuracy no matter how
mediocre the source data: Priceless. Also hopeless.

I believe libraries could *use* a richer metadata system than MARC. I just
wonder whether it's likely to happen...

Walt Crawford
wcc at rlg.org, 650-691-2227
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web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org wrote on 11/29/2005 10:25:50 AM:

> Walt.Crawford at rlg.org wrote:
>
> >Just quick notes...
> >
> >Relating to another posting: ISBD punctuation has been the bane of
people
> >handling MARC records for a very long time; you have to design display
> >rules to stay out of its way, which sometimes interferes with making
data
> >look right. I remember the justification for ISBD punctuation being "so
you
> >could determine the bibliographic elements when the cataloging is in a
> >language you don't read"--you know, because there's always a
> >space-semicolon-space after this element, etc. That always struck me as
a
> >vaguely improbable scenario: "I don't know what language that book is
in,
> >but there's the statement of responsibility!" (But hey, I'm definitely
not
> >a cataloger.)
> >
> >
> I had heard the "so you could OCR the catalogue card" version.
>
> >As for "us all" using templates and/or having multiple people to design
> >MARC displays: Generalizations are usually tricky. The display
> >specifications for Eureka databases (including the RLG Union Catalog)
have
> >always been based directly on MARC fields, subfields, and indicators; we
> >certainly don't have the luxury of "normalizing" those records in any
> >organized manner (since the database is being updated daily); and the
> >personpower available to write that spec has never been more than part
of
> >one person (me), with review and occasional assistance from a variety of
> >others. [snip]
> >
> I could from the school (perhaps a very small school) that thinks that
> when you extract a 245a (with or without normalizing the gratuitous
> punctuation) and put it in a specific spot on a screen (green screen or
> browser) you are using a template for the content placement. Perhaps it
> appears next to a friendly ( ... or more succinct, marc-oriented) label
> placed there  by the same templating rules. In short, if it is not in
> marc communications format, that glorious single string with its offsets
> etc., it has probably passed through some template (your specs, being an
> example) for human display.  That most of us sigh deeply and display the
> embedded punctuation, however arcane, mostly reflects the dead hand of
> AACR et al. and the cost of fixing thirty years of confusing punctuation
> with sub-fields indicators.
>
> Twenty plus years ago I simply learned enough of the rules to get my
> degree (along with a promise to never take money for cataloguing).  For
> my sins, I just supervise catalogues and cataloguers as well as do other
> library web stuff. In the last few years, I have *frequently* found
> opportunities to repurpose bibliographic information that *could* be
> extracted from a marc record but which brings with it a legacy of unique
> bits of stuff that doesn't map into other (perhaps equally arcane)
> citation formats.
>
> An example: could we not separate last name and first name in the 1xx
> and 7xx fields so that they can be placed in a user preferred order and
> not only in the AACR ordained pattern? We have 2000+ subfields and one
> of them can't be first name?
>     My excuse for getting that off my chest here?  I want to express
> marc records in a variety of ways within and beyond the library
> website.  ISBD routinely gets in my way. Occasionally so do other marc
> rules.
>
> Walter Lewis
> Halton Hills
> (the guy no one would confuse with Walt Crawford)
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