More great stuff by R. David Lankes.

Future of Libraries from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

Presentation to the Friends of the Dallas Public Library

The Singularity is Near

I am using the book The singularity is near: when humans transcend biology (Kurzweil, 2005) for the purpose of record coding and conversion analysis between the OCLC Connexion system‘s display of MARC and HTML records of the book.

The MARC and HTML records have both similarities and differences. Looking through a very general lens of data organization, cataloging and dissemination, the conceptual differences between the two encoding formats are few. They both organize and define records through various descriptive elements.  Both provide overlapping data about the record and the schemas used are in some cases independent, but are complementary in others. They use different naming conventions to describe the same elements but are representing those elements nonetheless. From the tag styles used to identify fields to naming conventions of tags to number of tags, the MARC and HTML record displays do a very similar job in describing records.

However, as we explore the individual elements that comprise the MARC and HTML general schemas we begin to see differences. The Dublin Core only has 15 different elements for the definition of a record where MARC has just fewer than 50 Additional Material Characteristics for the 006 field alone. When you factor in that MARC has numerous descriptive elements for each Fixed field, 0xx, 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 6xx, 7xx, 8xx and 9xx elements, we start to see a greater and decisive separation in the style of data recording between the two conventions. Continued…

So, despite my love for the Cleanr 0.1.2 by Chandra Maharzan, it gave me lots of problems with really long posts. There’s a chance I may go back to it but now I”m giving Clean Home 1.2.1 by Mid Mo Design a shot. This WordPress theme is one with a minimal, clean looking design and has full CSS widgetization. Special thanks to Bryan Helmig of Mid Mo Web Design.