[Web4lib] MARC to XML: the agony and the ecstasy

[K.G. Schneider]

For a presentation, I'm trying to come up with examples of what happens
when MARC is transformed to XML and then exposed through search engines
such as Endeca, Siderean, etc. ... examples that work well for
librarians who are at least a little familiar with MARC. Part of the
message I'm getting across is that MARC is very record-oriented and XML
is about data (MARC is from Mars... XML is from Venus?); but I'm also
trying to suggest that when we start exposing MARC in new webby
environments sometimes we get some new abilities, but other times the
results are not so pretty, due to limitations of the source data, even
though it's now XML. 

Originally I was trying to come up with metaphors about the difference
between MARC and the recombinative, hey-let's-put-on-a-show quality of
XML (a banana, an orange, and an apple... or fruit salad; a formal
garden... a rose float at the parade) but then I remembered what it was
like to explain email in the early days of the 'net, and the reality is
that the way to do that was to sit people in front of a computer and
have them send and receive messages. (Remember all those metaphors we
strained for in the Early Days?) So I'm hoping to find some good, live
examples of what I'm talking about. 

Thanks! 

Karen G. Schneider
kschneider at cclaflorida.org
Research & Development
College Center for Library Automation