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Where do we begin to effect this change? When we evaluate what we do today in light of what we think we should be doing in the not-too-distant future it becomes immediately evident that our current model is overly rigid. It consists of AACR, MARC21, and vendor systems that determine the public’s view of the library catalog. Each of these is known for having ponderous mechanisms that resist change, and take years to realize even minor modifications in how we work. Such a rate of change is no longer an option.
The economics of greater change are often cited as stumbling blocks. The most common argument about moving from the MARC record format to a more modern record design is that we have many hundreds of millions of MARC records in existing systems. Using this argument, we would never be able to justify a change to our catalogs. Given that our MARC records are machine-readable and fairly consistently coded, programmatic conversion of the records to a new format is not the greatest of our challenges. More to the point is the need to address the costs of our current practices. Some recent reports have suggested that libraries are putting too much of their effort into materials that are well covered in terms of bibliographic control, such as currently published books, and should concentrate their efforts on unique materials that are harder to locate. Libraries are not accustomed to thinking in terms of economics and shy away from making these choices, but in a world awash in information resources, some triage is going to be necessary.
I liked this paragraphy
Where do we begin to effect this change? When we evaluate what we do today in light of what we think we should be doing in the not-too-distant future it becomes immediately evident that our current model is overly rigid. It consists of AACR, MARC21, and vendor systems that determine the public’s view of the library catalog. Each of these is known for having ponderous mechanisms that resist change, and take years to realize even minor modifications in how we work. Such a rate of change is no longer an option.
The economics of greater change are often cited as stumbling blocks. The most common argument about moving from the MARC record format to a more modern record design is that we have many hundreds of millions of MARC records in existing systems. Using this argument, we would never be able to justify a change to our catalogs. Given that our MARC records are machine-readable and fairly consistently coded, programmatic conversion of the records to a new format is not the greatest of our challenges. More to the point is the need to address the costs of our current practices. Some recent reports have suggested that libraries are putting too much of their effort into materials that are well covered in terms of bibliographic control, such as currently published books, and should concentrate their efforts on unique materials that are harder to locate. Libraries are not accustomed to thinking in terms of economics and shy away from making these choices, but in a world awash in information resources, some triage is going to be necessary.
Footnote 9 in this article should actually say "http://www.medialab.nl" rather than "http://www.medialib.nl" – Someone was thinking about libraries too much…
Some more related reading at…
http://camelot.libr.canterb…
Looking input from everyone regarding this project please…