Message-Id: <199601311557.JAA05223@library.wustl.edu> Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 09:39:47 -0600 From: Heath Rezabek <mailto:hrezabek@FIAT.GSLIS.UTEXAS.EDU> Subject: Re: Re[2]: yet another charter revision To: Multiple recipients of list WEBCAT-L <mailto:WEBCAT-L@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU>
[x-posted to WebCat-L]On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Martin Hamilton wrote:
> There is and probably always will be a dichotomy between long-term
> cataloguing type information (cf. TEI headers, USMARC, UKMARC,
> CANMARC, PICAMARC, UNIMARC, and all the other MARCs and by extension
> BIB-1, GRS-1 and their friends) and automatic or semi-automatic use
> of this sort of information by computer programs.
Not necessarily, imho. Used as a hypothetical example, the Dublin Core seems to have been designed as a loose framework whose elements could be translated into richer MARC format, but at the same time could accommodate other elements -- elements relevant perhaps only to automated systems reading the DC records. I'd imagine TEI is designed with the same sorts of portabilities in mind.
A notion which came up in discussion with a local recently was that of an over-arching web catalog which was automated to as great a degree as possible using a non-proprietary metadata set format [DC was our example]. Agents would compile, as best they could, DC records [they could even write low-level headers] based on metadata gleaned from the file. This could be seen as pre-processing; catalogers could, in their own time, enrich DC/TEI/* records to suit their long-term needs; but this wouldn't have to stop the automation from generating for itself a larger base of semi-complete records.
> Either the program knows about the semantics of the metadata in the
> catalogue record, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, there's nothing it
> can use the information for - period!
If we have our own agents scripting the records to start with, presumably we can also allow them to tag them with whatever extra fields other 'wares will "need" to make sense/use of the record. Catalogers could, as said, view this as time-saving pre-processing, and enrich the records at leisure.
All imho amen.. :)
Heath M Rezabek mailto:hrezabek@fiat.gslis.utexas.edu http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~hrezabek/index.html GSLIS Masters Candidate University of Texas at Austin Technical Staff Assistant Perry-Castaneda Library EIC