Just think, we can format a catalog card if we want to. Now
systems can quickly display data in a uniform format on one page.
... with active links.

Dan Robinson
Indexing Services
H.W. Wilson Company
Bronx, NY
[log in to unmask]

On 29 Mar 00, at 13:05, Karen Coyle wrote:

> At 09:23 AM 3/29/00 -0500, you wrote:
>
>  What
> >XML offers is the possibility, of having client applications that know
> >nothing about MARC be able to format bibliographic records for display to
> >the user.
>
> Yes, the display possibilities of XML are exciting. I want to have the
> ability to build a display from a variety of resources and databases, so
> that my bibliographic information may come from a traditional library
> catalog (that outputs XML) but on the screen that data will be combined
> with full text, links to other resources about the author, etc., and yet,
> at the time of display, this whole mess of stuff can be a single, logical,
> XML document that allows for further navigation, retrieval, etc.
>
................
>
> And wouldn't it be great to present data to the user in a format that she
> can independently manipulate with standard computer programs? (Of course,
> the early promise that MicroSoft would use XML as its underlying format for
> its word processing program has already fallen through. Undoubtedly they
> didn't like not being able to tie up their data in a proprietary format.)
>
> My hope is that future systems will take the "tinker toy" approach, each
> one putting out data as interchangeable parts.
>
> ----------------------------------------------
> Karen Coyle                    [log in to unmask]
>   University of California Digital Library
>   http://www.kcoyle.net        510/987-0567
> ----------------------------------------------