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/
___} |__ \__________________________________________________________
