Re: [ARSCLIST] Cataloging sound recordings

[David Seubert <seubert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There isn't enough time to respond to all of the points in Karl Miller's
post I disagree with, but I think it is important to remember that MARC
is really a data interchange standard, not a software program. The ease
of editing MARC records and the intelligent display of MARC records is
all contingent upon the design of the systems that use MARC records. As
an example, in their book-centric world OCLC/WorldCat does a pretty good
job of mangling MARC records for sound recordings. I think that for a
novice library user it is very difficult to decipher the average
non-book catalog record in WorldCat. This doesn't mean that the MARC
isn't good for cataloging sound recordings, it means that OCLC cares
more about the display of the 20M+ books in their database than the 2M
sound recordings. Likewise, many cataloging tools have clunky,
inefficient interfaces for editing and creating "MARC" records.
(Cataloging systems don't actually use MARC records, they just import
and export them. If what you see looks like a MARC record, it is a trick
your database vendor is playing on you since librarians are comfortable
working in MARC). Again, this is not the fault of MARC, it is the fault
of the software designers (and their customers) who supposedly want
MARC-like editing interfaces where you do edit bits and bytes in the
fixed fields rather than drop down menus or whatever.

This isn't to say that MARC is perfect, but if we want useful displays
of MARC records in our catalogs and better editing tools we have to ask
for them.

David Seubert
UCSB


Karl Miller wrote:

> Sorry for this being such a long post, but there is a part of me that is
> trying to understand...
>
> >