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

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:40 AM, marijane white <[email protected]> wrote:
> What I meant to ask was, does it make it worse compared to data sets with little
>  or no rules whatsoever?  I would expect it to be better, even despite the
> inconsistencies, because you at least have a set of rules to start out with
> to help decipher the data, but it sounds like your experience is that it is not.

Well, it's a mixed picture. Some times when you got the right records
it's awesome. But with every awesome there's always rubbish mixed in.
And I think this is important; in traditional library systems / ILS'es
the problem of bad apples aren't as noticeable, free-text searching
(even if it is with specific fields) is always more forgiving than
when you sit down and try to typify, enumerate and normalize your
data. I've had this discussion with people like Martha Yee and Karen
Coyle who stumble into the same issues when they've gone RDF and FRBR;
the superior quality that was thought to be there was blemished by a
long list of inconsistencies, human errors and technical glitches, all
in need of fixing which is very hard once you pull MARC records (and
the culture with it) out.

> (Good thing we are not having this discussion on AUTOCAT; I suspect them's
> fightin' words.)

Oh, I've had this discussion on both AUTOCAT and NGC4LIB, and you'd be
surprised at the number of librarians who share my frustration with
the MARC data set (sadly, most of the support comes in the form of
private mails, as I suspect a lot of them share the frustrations but
do fear for their jobs, reputation, don't want to cause trouble, don't
want to rock the boat). But yes, it's controversial and caused a
ruckus. :) But I also think it causes awareness. I personally believe
I've caused more good than harm, but people disagree with me on that,
too, would you believe it? :)


Regards,

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