Meta‐information about MARC: an XML framework for validation, explanation and help systems
| Date | 01 June 2004 |
| Published date | 01 June 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830410524558 |
| Pages | 131-137 |
| Author | Joaquim Ramos de Carvalho,Maria Inês Cordeiro,António Lopes,Miguel Vieira |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Meta-information about
MARC: an XML
framework for
validation, explanation
and help systems
Joaquim Ramos de Carvalho
Maria IneÃs Cordeiro
AntoÂnio Lopes and
Miguel Vieira
Since 1998 there has been widespread interest in
the potentials of XML on the part of the library
community, regarding raising awareness,
expectations and experiences for library services in
various aspects (Hjùrgensen, 2001a, b; Tennant,
2002; Cordeiro and Carvalho, 2002; Carvalho and
Cordeiro, 2003a, b) more than clear directions
regarding the implications for bibliographic
metadata standards (Gardner, n.d.; Exner and
Turner, 1998; McCallum, 2000; Kim and Choi,
2000; Miller, 2000; 2002; Qin, 2000; Van
Herwijnen, 2000). The relationship between
MARC and XML has already been addressed in
the literature (Lam, 1998; Medeiros, 1999;
Granata, 2000; Johnson, 2001; Miller,2000, 2002;
Carvalho and Cordeiro, 2002) (although MARC
generally refers to library data formats, which can
include different subsets for bibliographic,
authority, holdings, classification and community
information, in this paper we refer to MARC
meaning mainly bibliographic data formats).
The interest in XML has been fueledby a variety
of needs that exist in the bibliographic data
processing community: wider circulation and usage
of bibliographic records requiring a mainstream
data format, the demand for flexible
representations of bibliographic data in a
continuously growing range of display formats
(html, pdf, text), and awareness about a certain
archaism of ISO 2709 as a transport format
Information and Documentation ± Format for
Information Exchange (ISO, 1996). ISO 2709 is the
common format for exchange underlying all
MARC formats; it consists of a record label, a
directory and data fields, with standard characters
for separators. The corresponding ANSI standard
is the ANSI/NISO (1994) Information Interchange
Format. The hope that XML would help to remove,
or overcome, unnecessary complexity in the
creation and processing of bibliographic records is
cited in the literature and in the messages
exchanged on the XML4Lib mailing list[1].
In this article, the XML representation of
MARC meta-information is the focus, instead of
the more common topic of the representation of
individual records. By meta-information is meant
the information about the standard itself, such as
the actual content of MARC documentation, most
of it included in MARC21 or UNIMARC
manuals (available at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/
and www.ifla.org/VI/3/p1996-1/sec-uni.htm).
Beyond the record structure and morphological
level of content designation, an important part of
such information describes semantic
characteristics of valid MARC records: which
The authors
Joaquim Ramos de Carvalho is Professor, University of
Coimbra, Quinta da Nara, Portugal, and a founder of
BookMARC.
Maria IneÃs Cordeiro is Library Information Systems Manager,
Art Library, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
Anto nio Lopes is Lead Developer and Miguel Vieirais is
Developer, both of BookMARC, Instituto Pedro Nunes, Quinta
da Nora, Portugal.
Keywords
Online cataloguing, Extensible markup language
Abstract
This article proposes a schema for meta-information about
MARC that can express at a fairly comprehensive level the
syntactic and semantic aspects of MARC formats in XML,
including not only rules but also all texts and examples
that are conveyed by MARC documentation. It can be thought
of as an XML version of the MARC or UNIMARC manuals, for
both machine and human usage. The article explains how such
a schema can be the central piece of a more complete
framework, to be used in conjunction with ``slim'' record
formats, providing a rich environment for the automated
processing of bibliographic data.
Electronic access
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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available
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Received 1 September 2003
Revised 2 October 2003
Accepted 7 November 2003
131
Library Hi Tech
Volume 22 .Number 2 .2004 .pp. 131-137
#Emerald Group Publishing Limited .ISSN 0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830410524558
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