Money is the elephant in the room, and lack thereof may be influenced by
computing and the internet, but libraries struggled mightily before
that, so it's best not to trot out that old excuse. I mean, go back and
read the records of the meetings at the British Museum around 1840 in
which Panizzi had to go through hoops to get funding to create anything
other than the cheapest, least helpful library catalog for the collection.
We do need to look rationally at the money issue. What holds us back
greatly -- our fundamental inability to change -- is money-related.
Where the money is stuck is in library systems. Systems vendors cannot
afford to re-tool unless libraries can afford to pay for it. Libraries
cannot afford to pay for it. We need to start from there and look for
things that we CAN do. This is where OCLC's foray into schema.org
becomes interesting, and could be a model even for transitioning to
BIBFRAME. (And it is possible that LibHub is also viable, but I cannot
find any description of what it is.) By starting with a technology that
only requires changes to display, not the entire backend of processing,
we move one tiny step forward. That doesn't mean we never give up MARC
-- it has too many limitations for us to cling to it for much longer --
but it buys us time and gives us a chance to make plans for a transition.
"Just say no" is no more viable today than when Nancy Reagan spouted it
at sneering teenagers decades ago.
kc
On 3/6/15 10:06 PM, J. McRee Elrod wrote:
> Ross said:
>
>> Almost as if you had a vested interest in the status quo or
>> something...
> All of our clients have a *large* vested interest in MARC, Their
> operations (acquisitions, processing, OPAC, circulation), use MARC
> based systems.
>
> In the present financial climate, I doubt they can afford to switch to
> anything else. I suspect that if Bibframe happens, a niche market for
> us will be producing MARC records from Bibframe data, just as we now
> produce AACR2 and UKMARC compatible records from RDA and MARC21
> records. Many are not willing to give up GMDs for example.
>
> For some clients we have had to take away bells and whistles (such as
> 505 contents and 520 summaries), because they could no longer afford
> them. (Many of our clients are special libraries whose acquisitions
> are not nearly all catalogued by national libraries, requiring
> original cataloguing on our part.)
>
> Unfortunately many administrators think that with the Internet,
> libraries are no longer vital, so are unwilling to provide adequate
> funding.
>
> So you are correct, I have a vested interest.
>
> Sorry you thought I was condescending. We have experience with poor
> communication between librarians and IT folk. UTLAS' first microfiche
> catalogues for example, had no title main entries, because the
> librarians told the programmers that 245 1st indicator 1 meant a title
> entry. Title main entries of course have 1st indicator 0, and were
> thus omitted.
>
> When UTLAS ceased, we took product production inhouse. My sons (SLC's
> IT) and I occasionally failed/fail to understand each other fully.
>
>
>
> __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
> {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
> ___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
--
Karen Coyle
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m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600
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