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

Lets be clear here, about what MARCXML is and what it might not be.

MARCXML is an XML serialization of MARC, and a good one. It does 
everything an XML serialization should do, reliable, bi-direction 
mapping at the encoding level leaving the higher-level content untouched.

MARC is computer representation of card-based library catalogue data, 
and a pretty reasonable one. Criticisms of it's baroque serialization, 
crusty character-set choices and lack of network-centric-ness don't 
stand up when to put a date to when those decisions were made (i.e. 
before XML, Unicode and network-centric-ness).

Card-based library catalogues were an innovation of the Napoleonic era, 
in which the details of books were entered on the backs of playing cards 
and send to Paris (both books and gambling being things to be 
controlled, this being a win-win situation).

Now there are lots of things that we might like MARCXML to be, but 
personally I find that once I think of it as a carrier for bibliographic 
data as conceptualised in the Napoleonic era, it never disappoints me.

Personally I'd rather start from scratch (or from librarything.com as 
the case may be) than build on MARCXML. We need to move on.

cheers
stuart
-- 
Stuart Yeates
http://www.nzetc.org/       New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/     Institutional Repository