-------- Forwarded message --------
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 08:44:02 -0500
From: Michael Gorman <[log in to unmask]>
To: "J. McRee Elrod" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Latest brilliant idea

*LC's press release:
*"The Library of Congress (LOC) has contracted with Zepheira, a semantic
web development company, to accelerate the launch of its Bibliographic
Framework Transition Initiative (BFTI). A major goal of BFTI is to replace
the MARC 21 exchange format with a new Linked Data model."

*My message to the person who sent me that:*
*"I knew Henriette Avram very well--a brilliant woman.  She was not a
librarian and the weaknesses of MARC are, in my view, due to that fact.
She was presented with a problem--automating the production of LC cards
(the guff about it being conceived as a communication format ab initio is
just that, guff) and, not being a librarian, developed a way of automating
card records without changing their basic structure.  I am convinced that a
librarian would have said "Great--let's do away with all that is wrong with
cards and develop a computer record." (For example: grouping access points
rather than having 1**s and 7**s.)   Still, MARC was and is a brilliant
idea.*
* *
*"Now they are going to turn the whole thing over to a bunch of 30-year
olds pretending to be 20 year olds (is there a more bogus sounding thing
than a "a semantic web development company"?) who wouldn't know a library
if it walked up to them and squirted orange juice in their faces.  Really?"*

*All the best, Michael*

*----*
*Michael Gorman*
 *525 W. Superior, #225*
*Chicago, Illinois 60654
*