Welcome Morbus:
> * I am not a trained librarian. Is there a friendly place for
> self-taught, enthused users to ask questions concerning the various
> technologies? I understand that this list is _perl_ for
> _librarians_, and innocent questions about MARC and "how best
> to catalog $this" probably aren't on-topic here. Certainly
> encourage me if I'm wrong.
If you are into Perl and have questions/concerns/musings about library/infosci
type of things you have come to the right place. The list started as a forum
to discuss the construction of a MARC processing library for Perl. But it
has always been the hope that it would evolve to support all sorts of
projects, discussions, and free wheeling musings. It has done this to some
extent, but to be honest I'm hoping it will evolve in that direction more...
so your email is like a breath of fresh air.
The main thing here is: you DO NOT have to be a librarian and versed in
library-ese to post here. The main thing is interest/enthusaism in using
Perl to do stuff relating to library and information science. Your experience
in the Perl community would be a great assett to this microcosm perl4lib
community.
> * they're ugly and time-consuming to use.
Code, or HTML? Yes on time consuming. Full featured Integrated Library
Systems have lots of bells and whistles that can be kind of distracting if
all you want to do is have a database of bibliographic data.
> * they cater to library-installations only (as they should,
> but Koha, for instance, forces me through about five to
> twelve screens before I can add one item. I don't care
> about ordering, acquisitions, or budgeting - I just
> want a "proper" [1] database).
Yeah, Koha et al are largely over the top if you looking for a system to
manage your private collection.
> * they haven't been developed in ages, and support seems
> scattered around numerous sites, people, and organizations
> (jake, most notably).
Koha, and others in active development. MARC::Record and other modules
are in continuous development (as the perl4lib archive will show).
> Am I missing the magical product? The closest I've seen is
> phpMyLibrary, but that still doesn't satisfy all my "needs" [2].
Perhaps, what are you looking for? Software to manage your personal collection?
If so I think you might be missing it, and that this might be an interesting
niche to grow some Perlmoss in. Interested?
> * Since I'm newb, I'm still learning about MARC and all the tags
> and they're meanings. For one, there seems to be numerous
> output formats of MARC (MARC communication, tabbed/column
> view, XML view, etc., etc.). What format does MARC.pm
> write? I noticed on a TODO list somewhere a request for
> output formating? Is anyone interested in a MARC::Simple
> sort of module, that would "use English"-ize all the tags
> themselves ($record->author_name("Logan, Robert K.") and
> $record->author_date("1939-"), which would just be wrappers
> around MARC::Field and the relevant tag numbers).
First off, I would ignore MARC.pm. It has been eclipsed by MARC::Record.
MARC.pm isn't being developed any longer, and was mainly an experiment to
see what people would like to have in a MARC/Perl library. MARC::Record
took the lessons learned from MARC.pm development and tried to do things
better: better OO primarily.
MARC is an old data interchange format that is defined in ANSI/NISO Z39.2
The Library of Congress has been experimenting with various flavors of
SGML/XML for the past few years but Z39.2 is still the defacto standard.
> * Does MARC::Record create leaders? Is there anything that does?
> Leaders are something which I'm still confused about.
Yes MARC::Record generates leaders. If you don't specify one yourself, it
will give you a bare bones one. Leaders are really an artifact of MARC's
origins since their main function is to tell a program how much tape to
read :)
> Thanks for listening.
Thanks for your email, hopefully it will be the first of many.
//Ed
Ed Summers
aim: inkdroid
web: http://www.inkdroid.org
