Subscribers to this forum (I am sending this to both the USMARC list
and Autocat) will certainly be interested in a brief article in the
April 2000 issue of "American Libraries." On page 80 in the
"Technically Speaking" column, there is a section captioned "The End
of MARC?" which describes a talk given by Dick Miller, head of
technical services and systems librarian at Stanford's Lane Medical
Library, at last year's Medical Library Association meeting.

Mr. Miller suggests that there is an immediate need to replace the
MARC formats with XML, and that ALA should lead a standards effort to
adapt AACR2 to meet the needs of XML.  He further cautions "Or will we
backslide into an environment in which there will be multiple ways to
encode AACR2 bibliographic data on the Web?"

Does everyone agree that we should immediately replace the MARC 21
format with XML and immediately radically re-write AACR2 to be an
input manual for XML?  As Chair of one of the standards making bodies
most directly affected by this rather radical suggestion, I'm curious
to hear whether there is a groundswell of support for this course of
action.

Bruce Chr. Johnson
Chair, MARBI

The preceeding does not necessarily represent the official position
of the American Library Association or my employer.