Analysis of problems in the MARC21 record
There are some efforts that claim to be post-MARC bibliographic record formats, or that are billed as replacements for the MARC21 record. Few (any?) of these provide an analysis of the problems with the current record format that the new formats attempt to solve. At the same time, may people who have worked or are working with the MARC21 format feel that it meets their needs, and there is no reason to change. In this repo I/we will chronicle some of the actual problems with the MARC21 format that make it both difficult to work with today and also difficult to translate to new formats.
- Introduction
- Basic Goals for a Metadata Format
- What Catalogers Like About MARC
- MARC21 and ISO2709 - differences
- Statistics
- Coded fixed field data
- Redundancy
- Different values for same term
- Indicators
- Variable fields
- Inconsistent coding
- Varying level of detail
- Ambiguous data
- Redundancy
- Non-distinguished data elements
- Two-level
- No real linking