Matthew Gilmore of the Washingtoniana Division of the DC Public
Library wrote to ask if there is any relatively easy way to convert
a MARC [AMC] record to HTML. This question is probably better suited
to the USMARC list since its answer would interest all MARC users,
but the answer is a qualified "yes". Some OPACs have HTML (Web)
interfaces that convert bibliographic records that began as MARC
records into HTML. Unfortunately, I suspect you have to have the
library system installed and load the MARC records into it first
before you can get the HTML output.
Another option might be to use the freeway utility "MARCBreakr",
(it's available from LC's anonymous file server "ftp.loc.gov/pub/marc")
to convert the AMC records to pure text and then do a little
search and replace on the tags to convert them to HTML. This
might sound like a complicated process, but it's little more than
word processing in the end. If the content designation in the
records is predictable, it should be pretty easy to do, assuming
fields like the 008 and the Leader are just discarded. How much
of the MARC records one wanted to keep could complicate the process.
Considering the popularity of the web and HTML, someone has probably
written a program to convert directly from MARC to HTML. I think
I even got word of such a project in Belgium, but I couldn't find
any clue to it in my large email file of info on MARC and SGML.
I'll keep looking nonetheless.
--Randy Barry
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