Library of Congress: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative

The Library of Congress has begun a "Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative."

"A major focus of the initiative will be to determine a transition path for the MARC 21 exchange format in order to reap the benefits of newer technology while preserving a robust data exchange that has supported resource sharing and cataloging cost savings in recent decades."

"This work will be carried out in consultation with the format's formal partners -- Library and Archives Canada and the British Library -- and informal partners -- the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and other national libraries, the agencies that provide library services and products, the many MARC user institutions, and the MARC advisory committees such as the MARBI committee of ALA, the Canadian Committee on MARC, and the BIC Bibliographic Standards Group in the UK."

This could make the RDA effort look like a piece of cake. How will the process be arranged to include these players?

Good luck, though. Sounds like fun to me. Let's get to work.

The press release has more information.

The MARC pilot project final report by Henriette D. Avram (1968) 173 p.

The MARC pilot project final report by Henriette D. Avram (1968) 173 p.

A bit of history today. The MARC pilot project launched library cataloging into the digital era in 1968. We are still using the MARC format today, but it is widely understood to be ready (or long overdue) for replacement.

As we bid to leave the MARC format behind, Avram's report on the pilot project is well worth perusing.

My employer, Yale University Library, was one of the participating libraries.

As I have continued to think about this today, I re-read Roy Tenant's 2004 article, A Bibliographic Metadata Infrastructure for the 21st Century in which Tenant broadly identifies ways we must "assimilate MARC into a broader, richer, more diverse set of tools, standards, and protocols." Tenant sees that we don't need another bibliographic format, we need an infrastructure that accommodates wide diversity in formats. This is an excellent article. Well worth reading for its application to our current situation nearly a decade after he wrote it.

We do need a replacement for MARC, one that will be better suited to the infrastructure Tenant outlines. The Network Development and MARC Standards Office at the Library of Congress, the Standards division at the Library and Archives Canada and the Bibliographic & Metadata Standards section at the British Library, the maintenance agencies staffed to care for MARC, should initiate a MARC replacement project.

OCLC report: Implications of MARC tag usage on library metadata practices

OCLC has published a report called, Implications of MARC Tag Usage on Library Metadata Practices[pdf]

I've only begun to read it.

The "implications" section of the Exec. Summ. are interesting.

1. Be consistent. Splitting content across multiple fields will negatively affect indexing, retrieval, and mapping to other encoding schema.
2. Respond to local user needs whether that is counting plates in a book or adding contents notes.
3. Focus on authorized names, classifications, and controlled vocabularies that key word searching of full-text will not provide (as full text online negates some value of descriptive surrogates).
4. Use specific MARC fields for particular types of note if they are available rather than the general 500 note.
5. Map the 200 or so MARC 21 fields in use to simpler schema. (MARC data cannot continue to exist in its own discrete environment, separate from the rest of the information universe. Leverage it and use it in other domains to reach users in heir own networked environments.)
6. Accuracy of fields that are used in machine matching becomes more important in environments using linked data to leverage fuller descriptions and other related information generated from other sources.

And MARC's future:

1. MARC is a niche data communication format approaching the end of its life cycle.
2. Encoding schema will need to robust MARC crosswalks to ingest millions of legacy records.
3. How would we create, capture, structure, store, search, retrieve, and display objects and metadata if we didn’t have to use MARC and if we weren’t limited by current library systems?
4. How do we best take advantage of linked data and avoid creating the same redundant metadata in individual records?
5. How do we integrate library metadata with sources outside the traditional library environment?
6. To meet the demands of the rest of the information universe, give priority to interoperability with other encoding schema and systems.

MARC marketplace: a report

A study of the North American marketplace for MARC records done for LC by R2 consulting.

http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/MARC_Record_Marketplace_2009-10.pdf