Just a comment about punctuation and user interfaces/OPAC displays. Our digital team creates user interfaces frequently and often reuse MARC data (See http://diglib.ptsem.edu/ for examples). We never use ISBD punctuation in the display, but instead use simple labels, e.g., Author, Date, Title, Language, Genre, Journal Title, etc., to let the user know what element they are looking at.

When we are parsing MARCXML we generally rely on fields, subfields, and indicators and would only use punctuation in cases already described by Kelley McGrath (an equal sign (=) precedes a parallel title in the 245 field).

I honestly don't think users care about ISBD punctuation. As far as reusing and manipulating MARC data via programming, I feel punctuation often just gets in the way (particularly end of field punctuation which we normally strip out).

Chris

Christine Schwartz

XML Database Administrator

Princeton Theological Seminary Library

25 Library Place

Princeton, NJ 08540

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On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 2:59 PM, Trail, Nate <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I don't think we're disagreeing that much.
The bibframe transformation from MARC to bibframe is not a user viewing an OPAC display, but a system that has MARC records in hand.  Once it's parsed, the OPAC will be able to do what it wants with each separate bibframe property, including chaining it together with punctuation, ISBD or otherwise.
We don't/won't expect end users to view/understand RDF triples or any raw bibframe serialization; it will be turned into HTML or whatever for the end user.

As far as systems being unable to load MARC and therefore even less likely to load bibframe, I think you're wrong. MARC may have been overly complex for backend systems, but Bibframe is designed to be serialized in a number of ways, JSON being one of them.  I can envision a jquery module easily ingesting a bibframe "record" and converting it to whatever the receiving system needs, or just displaying it in the browser.

 Nate

-----Original Message-----
From: J. McRee Elrod [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Trail, Nate
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Punctuation

Nate Trail:

>If it's in a MARC record, there's no need to guess, because the
>subfields are already parsed parts. Title proper is 245$a, subtitle is 245$b, etc.

Most patrons never see the MARC record.  I'm talking about the OPAC display.

I know of no OPAC which displays the subfield codes.  A few allow patrons to click "MARC", but I've never seen anyone but a cataloguer do that.

While if viewed, the MARC subfield codes parse parts,  only a tiny minority of people would be able to read with understanding a Bibframe html marked up record.  They are dependent on the display based on that record.  That display needs punctuation.  Punctuation is more likely to be consistent from system to system if in the record.

ISBD is the most successful internatonal bibliographic standard ever; I hate to see it abandoned.  My only argument with it is seeing the period ending an element as introducing the next, and not considering alternate title as other title information.

People seem to be overly optimistic about the ability of ILSs, and their affordability.  We have clients which can't load MARC*.  They certainly will not be able to load Bibframe.


*For such clients we export what their ILS requires, e.g., all subjects (persons, corporations, conferences, uniform titles, topics, places, genres) in one "Subject" field, separate by demarkers.


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