Re: Dynamic vs. Fixed World Views was Re: MARCXML to Topic Maps? MODS to Topic Maps?

Patrick!

> From my perspective, formats, such as MARC are *representing* something that
> exists whether it appears in MARC or MARCXML or in some other
> *presentation.*

Yes, I understand this part. However, with this ;

<marc:subfield code="a">New York, N.Y. :</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code="b">Atlantic,</marc:subfield>
<marc:subfield code="c">[1957?]</marc:subfield>

when you remove the presentation, you get this ;

New York, N.Y. :
Atlantic,
[1957?]

This is the actual meat, this is stripped of presentation. And still
you got presentation artifacts in there, and this presentation is
different from practice to practice, even country to country if you
want to divert in to various versions of MARC. Sure, there is
presentation, or wrapper if you like, but I'm not whining about the
presentation / wrapper; I'm whining about the actual stuff in the
middle, the actual meta data. And here we're talking strictly
artifacts, but when we dig into a more prose-prone field, it gets a
heckovalot worse, with abbreviations, markup and undocumented
relationships to other fields, all sitting somewhere between
cataloging best-practice and personal negligence.

> What I was suggesting, apparently offensively, was that with sufficiently
> granular mapping into a topic map that if someone ask for a standard MARC
> presentation of the same data, that could be delivered.

Oh, come now, there was no offense there, even if I'm passionate about
this very topic. In fact, I don't even think I'm capable of being
offended by anything.

On the flip side, you're still not correct. The second you place one
thing into a different model than where it came from, the meaning
changes, even in the smallest of ways (versioning, new context, etc.)
unless you duplicate the original model. Now maybe what you're trying
to say is to recreate all of MARC (or maybe a mostly used part of the
model?), and make an additional map on top (it is Topic Maps after
all) to create a greater richness. Maybe that is doable, but I still
would call it worthless except to peculiars.

> Hope you are having a great weekend!

Monday is 30 minutes away ...

> PS: I did not intent to mis-represent anything you said. If that was the
> case, however inadvertently, my apologies.

Let me clarify this one, as it seems to bite the core of this apple. I
made a statement, claiming "but the MARC dataset is crap. There, I
said it. It's rubbish for any other purpose than to be worked with and
searched by trained librarians." Lars M jumps in, and use MARCXML as
an example of MARC data (I suspect mostly because binary MARC would
suck in mail form). And you state ; "I don't disagree with Alex on the
*technical* merits of MARCXML."

But the thing is, I didn't say MARCXML is crap. Well, I said it in a
different place, but in *this* context I was talking about MARC, or
more specifically MARC21. That would be a fine little
misunderstanding, but it did spur on your allegory ;

"Alex's approach is like the drunk searching under the street lamp for
his keys."

You're implying quite a dramatic fault in what I say, in my
"approach", whatever that might be. This hoopla based on the MARC vs.
MARCXML misunderstanding, nothing more. I don't think you fully
understand what my approach is, because I'm not the enemy of library
legacy like I feel you think of me. Just because I'm pointing out that
they suck doesn't mean they have no value, but it does have
implications for how we can go about squeezing value from them (and
I'd strongly advice against re-creating the MARC model and try to
extend or filter it). I may be annoyed by MARC and totally hate
MARCXML, but I'm still trying to work with the library community both
in awareness about their problems (like a lack of identity management,
and ontological granularity, enumeration and typeification) and
solutions to it (prototypes, suggested technologies, etc.)

Anyway, now it's only 12 minutes left of Sunday, and I'm in bad need
of a shower. Good night, and I hope we can continue a more fruitful
and happy conversation tomorrow. :)


Kind regards,

Alex
-- 
 Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
--- http://shelter.nu/blog/ ----------------------------------------------
------------------ http://www.google.com/profiles/alexander.johannesen ---