[XML4Lib] MARC format

[Brian Harrington]

--On Tuesday, September 16, 2008 2:02 PM +0200
Deborah.SCOTT-DOUGLAS at oecd.org wrote:

> We would like to convert our publications records to MARC format for a
> new version of our research product which is used principally by
> university/research and government libraries.   It would be our strong
> preference to create them in xml version.   The question which has been
> raised is whether we can anticipate that libraries commonly have the
> ability to accept data in xml.  Is this a fair assumption?  Would there
> be a convincing argument for supporting both formats? 

We started providing MARC records at the beginning of this year.  When we
surveyed the libraries that had been asking for them, they indicated a
definite preference for MARC21 with the MARC-8 character set.  Luckily,
there's MarcEdit <http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/html/index.php>,
which does a very good job with both MARC/MARCXML and MARC-8/UTF-8
conversions.  So it's relatively easy to maintain your records in one
format and provide them in another.

Does anyone know how many of the major ILS packages currently support
MARC21XML imports?  Or is a vendor that provides records in XML simply
shifting the conversion task to the customer?

	-- Brian



--
Brian Harrington
Content and Resource Development Coordinator
Project MUSE
The Johns Hopkins University Press
brian at jhu.edu