Comments for Library Web Chic

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Karen

Karen — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:09:11 +0000

Apologies to Mike, whose comment got marked as spam for some reason. I’ve retrieved it from Akismet and pushed it through. Wish that it had gone through first because hits on many of my underlying frustrations.

Comment on Experiments with YazProxy by Danielle Plumer

Danielle Plumer — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:54:08 +0000

Karen,
A couple of options. The guys at UNT (Mark Phillips and Kurt Nordstrom) have successfully set up an SRU server, using Solr for the indexing, which might be an alternative approach. Ladd Hanson at UT Austin has set up a Zebra server running SRU, although I’m having some problems with it that we need to figure out. Also, I’m going to try to get Sebastian Hammer from Index Data here this summer, and it might be a good time to bring in Ralph LeVan from OCLC again (their resident SRU guru). We could have another SRU workshop like I did a couple of years ago.
If you’d like me to test your setup using the SRU client we have built into TexasHeritageOnline, let me know.
Danielle

Comment on Experiments with YazProxy by Karen

Karen — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:23:18 +0000

Well, things like e-journals are particularly problematic for a number of reasons. First if a library gets the journal from an aggregator (like say EbscoHost’s Academic Search Complete) there is an issue with the fact that what you get changes frequently, which is why libraries rely on vendors like Serial Solutions to help them keep their data up to date. But even with Serial Solutions this information has to be batch loaded on a regular basis. In terms of OCLC, I believe that this would mean adding and removing ones symbol from records frequently enough to create a maintenance issue. Non-aggregator access can also change dramatically over time. Most libraries have issues keeping up with e-journals as it is.

Also, some library’s don’t add items to OCLC that they don’t lend via ILL. In their minds, what is the point of letting people know you have it if they can’t use it. Either they can’t ILL it or it is an electronic item whose access is limited to specific users. (Ejournals and E-books are good examples of things that typically only an institution’s affiliates have access to).
Oh then there is the issue of correct URLs for electronic items. Most institutions provide access to these via proxy so each institution has a slightly different url.

These are just a few reasons why libraries might not give OCLC all their holdings info. It sure does makes things messy though.

Comment on Experiments with YazProxy by Jonathan Rochkind

Jonathan Rochkind — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:24:54 +0000

I’m curious about why it isn’t the case. I definitely get the feeling that OCLC would _like_ libraries to add all their holdings to Worldcat (for their own business purposes, of course). Worldcat Local users are doing so–if not yet, then working on it. (soon to include the entire northwest summit consortium).

But I realize that most libraries, my own included, don’t do this, and feel that they couldn’t -possibly- do this, that it would create some kind of problem. But I don’t really understand why exactly, even at my own library.

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Karen

Karen — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:59:59 +0000

My rant isn’t just about MARCXML it is about MARC in general. I do think that in the process of deciding to create MARCXML, someone should have thought about thought about the parts of MARC that really don’t work well. Particularly if this is the data format we use to transmit between ourselves and non-libraryfolk. The node names don’t make sense (which I acknowledge is a legacy of MARC) but that doesn’t make it right or easy to use.

On the subject of XPath, the example I crabbed about is EASY compared to some of the things one has to do to get the right data out of MARCXML. The XPath syntax when one has to get a particular subfield from a particular field with certain indicators, is IMHO extremely convoluted. The two problems I see with using MARCXML is that the person writing the code has to have a pretty good knowledge of XPath to deal with, and that same person needs to understand the intricacies of the MARC record syntax. Frankly, I don’t find that all that common in libraries, let alone outside of libraries.

Which leave us caught between using a complex and cumbersome standard - MARCXML and a simpler standard which isn’t rich enough from a metadata perspective - Dublin Core. Forgive me but I just don’t find that satisfactory.

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Jakob

Jakob — Mon, 05 May 2008 08:31:05 +0000

I don’t understand your rant - sure MARC is a terrible format in some sense, but MARCXML is just an XML-representation of MARC, so don’t blame MARCXML but MARC! Like Dan showed you only have to know how to write the right XPath statement. By the way the only additional value of MARCXML compared to MARC is that you have a character encoding and basic structure in a format that can be used by all common programming libraries. Don’t expect more magic.

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Dan Scott

Dan Scott — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:27:33 +0000

To be fair to the creators of MARCXML, “245″ would be an invalid element name and wouldn’t work with any conforming XML tools. The XML standard (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml/) defines a valid name as:

Name ::= (Letter | ‘_’ | ‘:’) (NameChar)*

… so it has to begin with a letter, underscore, or colon.

Even if XML allowed numeric names, I don’t see how it’s significantly more difficult to match nodes with XPath syntax like “//245″ vs. “//datafield[@tag='245']“. Selecting records based on the value of leader position 18 certainly isn’t fun, but then it isn’t much fun in MARC21 either.

So MARCXML is nothing more than re-encoding MARC21 in XML format. The major benefit over MARC21 is that you get to work with standard tools and standard encodings.

Comment on Using Google Spreadsheets to collect info via forms by Sukhdev Singh

Sukhdev Singh — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:12:52 +0000

My slides on using Google Docs for Surveys might be of your interest.

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Alice Sneary

Alice Sneary — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:05:09 +0000

Thanks for suffering through the pain, Karen. We’re excited about opening up the WorldCat API to a wider audience…and glad that we have smart people like you, thinking about it!

Comment on Why MARC drives me nuts by Galen Charlton

Galen Charlton — Fri, 02 May 2008 17:41:29 +0000

This reminds me of one of things lost when UKMARC was folded into MARC21: UKMARC didn’t require that the punctuation be embedded in the record. Nor does UNIMARC. I’ve often wished that USMARC/MARC21 had taken up that idea.