Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 13:52:53 -0500 From: Gerry Mckiernan <mailto:GMCKIERN@GWGATE.LIB.IASTATE.EDU> Subject: XML for MARC To: mailto:WEBCAT-L@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU
_XML for MARC_Over the past several weeks, I am noticed more and more mention of XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, with many st ting that it will be _ The Next Step_ in the evoluation of the Web and Web pages. I myself am just beginning to l arn about it from journal articles, new monographs [We've ordered and are receiving all the major quality books on the t pic here at ISU], and of course, Web sites.
To Quote: 'XML is a subset of SGML. XML is not a markup language, as HTML is, but a meta-language that is capab e of containing markup languages in the same way as SGML. UnQuote
Quote "...the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), takes document markup to the next level, offering human-readable sema tic markup, which is also machine-readable. As a result, XML makes it dramatically easier to develop and deploy new miss on-specific markup, enabling the automation of the authoring, parsing, and processing of networked data."
UnQuote For an excellent review article, a must-read is "X Marks the Spot: eXtensible Markup Language opens the oor to a motherlode of automated Web applications' at http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/xml/x-marks-the-spot.html
The relationship of XML to SGML prompted me to revisit the Library of Congress Web page on MARC [http://lcweb.loc.gov marc/] and to review an LC effort to convert MARC to SGML [For details, see [http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/ ; MARC DTDs (Do ument Type Definitions ] This in turn prompted thoughts about the conversion or mapping of MARC to XML, and to consider all of the potential possibilities for enhanced access and navigation and presentation of MARC record data and the assoc ated imnformation.
As Always, I would much appreciate any comments, questions, concerns, queries, contributions, citations, or critique about the application of XML to MARC data, be they bibliographic records, Subject Authority Files, Name Authority Files LCSH, etc.
Joy!
Gerry McKiernan Curator, CyberStacks(sm) Iowa State University Ames IA 50011
mailto:gerrymck@iastate.edu http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/
"The Best Way to Predict the Future is To Invent It!" Attributed to Peter Drucker