Does MARC Have A Future?

Does MARC Have a Future?
Diane I. Hillmann
Information Institute of Syracuse/
Metadata Management Associates

Doesn’t the answer depend on
what we mean by future?
7/9/09
2
CCS Forum, Chicago, 2009

Yes, No, Maybe …
Yes …
Because it will take some unknown number of years to move our legacy data to a more modern, FRBR-aware format
Because our community is still largely using MARC, and we’ll need to retain the ability to communicate in MARC until we build tools to do something else
Because the wiring in our heads is still MARC …
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Yes,No, Maybe …
No …
Because in order to keep MARC available to those who need it to be sustainable in the interim, we need to freeze further changes, sooner rather than later, otherwise we raise costs for everyone
Because MARC is best for flat files, and most of us want to take advantage of the advanced browsing we can do with FRBR-style records
RDA really can’t be used with MARC, unless we want to go forward on our hands and knees …
7/9/09
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Yes,No, Maybe …
Maybe …
If you define ‘future’ in a very limited way, say, the next 5-8 years
If you recognize that RDA is very influenced by our experience with MARC, particularly in the area of vocabularies, thus the shadow of RDA may always look something like MARC
Because MARC will always be in our heads, just like our mother’s voices are …
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Do We Need A Replacement?
Only if we think we need to protect our data from the world, or the world from our data …
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Instead, We Could …
Use RDA
It’s a FRBR-based, bibliographic vocabulary presented in a more modern form, including some familiar ideas
The elements, sub-elements, and vocabularies can be used with XML encoding or as part of RDF triples
The data is easily used and understood by other communities who are used to exchanging XML data
RDA elements and vocabularies can easily be extended by specialized communities whose needs are not entirely met by RDA out-of-the-box
7/9/09
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Why Does This Strategy Work?
Might help to look at what “interoperability” means in our context
Wikipedia cites the IEEE definition:
“ … the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged”
Libraries have understood this concept primarily within the context of MARC and our long history of data exchange
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Let’s Think Again About Our Needs
We definitely hear questions:
If we want to join the world of data “out there,” will we have to redo all our older data?
What would it take to achieve a reasonable level of interoperability fairly quickly?
Where should we start?
First, check what’s happening outside our community
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DC Interoperability Levels
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We had these in MARC, in the documentation built over the decades
We now have them as well in RDA
RDA Elements and Relationships are registered and available to all freely
Going forward we have tools that will allow us to build, maintain, and extend these vocabularies
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“‘Semantics’ in this sense does not refer to well-formed natural-language definitions ... Rather, it refers to formally stated relationships between terms and rules for using such statements to draw automatic conclusions (logical inferences). This includes use of URIs and conformance with formally specified domains, ranges, and sub-property relations.”
-- http://dublincore.org/documents/interoperability-levels/index.shtml
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Some Background on DSPs
DSP = “Description Set Profile” – it’s the newest iteration of tApplication Profile, reflecting the relationship with the Dublin Core Abstract Model
In a more general sense, it is a way to look at and discuss the various “packages” that are needed for a full expression of library data: bibliographic, authority, etc.
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This is, of course, where we need to be, very soon …
As part of the Registry contract with ALA, we are building the capability to expose XML schemas based on the following element aggregations: Core, Enhanced, Special
A tool to allow RDA users to create their own “Description Set Profiles” will be coming in the fall
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Here we see the “Holy Grail” and it’s likely to take a bit of time to get here
Consider a scenario where each record would have as part of it’s namespace declaration a link to the DSP that was used to create it?
In a world that seems to be becoming less predictable, we would like to see a method for ensuring some useful predictability without significant new investments of human effort
7/9/09
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Joining the World of Data
To participate fully we need to think about making our data available broadly AND using data created outside libraries effectively
A “bespoke” data format is not the best way to do this
RDA is a good first step, but we have a significant amount of work yet to realize its potential
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Thank you!
✔ out the Registry:
http://metadataregistry.org
Contact:
Diane I. Hillmann
Metadata.maven@gmail.com
7/9/09
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Does MARC Have A Future?

by Diane I. Hillmann on Jul 16, 2009

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