>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
Fair enough. My biggest questions so far seem to be:
* one of the things I'd like to pursue is an index of serial
article titles and authors. I'd like to have all the regular
MARC information, but for every iteration of the serial, index
title, author, blurb (optional) of the major articles. I've yet
to discover how to do this in MARC. Some others I've asked have
suggested MARC Subjects, but that doesn't give me the depth I
need ("show me every article ever written by this guy").* which MARC output format does MARC::Record create? In various of the demo oss4lib softwares I've seen, there's almost always a "show as MARC" option, but I always get a cutesy rendered HTML table, and not the actual ASCII record. Does MARC::Record read them all? Should I really care what the output format is? Is MARC never truly intended for human-reading (you'd think, since it's "MAchine Readable" <g>)?
* There seems to a number of other ways to index things - OAI, DublinCore, etc., etc. Did these arise to replace MARC due to limitations in the format? Are any of them being used for new, non-legacy, applications instead of MARC? I've seen various converters for the different formats to and from MARC. Can I "go wrong" if I ALWAYS baseline to MARC and then convert to a more "futuristic" standard (like the MARC XML export, DublinCore, etc., etc.).
* ISBN or LOC? Which should I use? ISBN gives me the benefit of easy conversion to Amazon's ASIN for more metadata (and even MORE metadata by linking off to iMDB for movie data), but my understanding was that ISBNs aren't as unique as they were supposed to be (changing from edition to edition, publisher to reprint, etc., etc.).
I had more questions around here somewhere, but they seem to be more "you haven't read enough" and less "tips picked up from doing this for years".
>> * 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.
I haven't really looked into the code much - mostly their addition interface, since that's where I'll be spending the most amount of time for a few months. One of my first coding projects was to create an HTML/DOM/CSS/JS form of the common MARC tags (as per the LOC brochure). Not necessarily working, but just a usable, quick input form. I've yet to see one "flow". With that in mind, some questions:
* Does one of these already exist? Have I missed it?
* As old-timers, do you EVER have a moment where you're like "man, what was that indicator number again?". Would initially- hidden-but-expandable-inline-help be worth doing (for me, it would)?
* As old-timers, what sort of input mechanism are you already
used to? Do you type tag numbers by hand, tabbing through
fields? When you're filling in indicators, are they two different
fields ("tab, type, tab, type, tab") or one ("tab, type, tab").
What order do you input the information? Numerical by tag?
Bibliographic, Subject, Physical Description, etc.? * Is it a multi-step process or one screen? Are previously
entered values prefilled? ("I've already typed Chelsea House
once, so I'll just select it from this here pop-down menu").>> 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?
Ultimately, I want the iMDB. I want to be able to find how many books I have that were published in Timbuktu, how many DVDs I have that were catered by Pizza Hut, and how many serials I have that showed a 30% increase in page numbers during the holiday season. When I've been looking around at prebuilt software, if it passes the interface/updated test, I try to hunt around for the SQL schema to see how it's built. I've seen very few that allow me to do this (biggest gripe: an "authors" field in the book table, as opposed to an "authors" table with a book_id, same with "publisher", etc.).
>> 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::Record was what I meant - sorry. I thought "MARC.pm" was the generic name for "MARC crap in Perl" since the Sourceforge project name was "marcpm". With that in mind, would a MARC::Simple of the MARC::Record distribution be worth having to anyone but newbs like me? <G>
Here's my problem, really:
* I read a lot of stuff. * I never throw anything away. * The stuff I read is .. . . "odd", in the sense that no library would probably stock it, nor would any existing librarian take the time to index it in MARC, etc., etc.
And the pie-in-the-sky wide-eyed wonder-boy:
* If indexing things the "right" way was easy, I'd be able to download freely available MARC records with indexes for RUE MORGUE, VIDEO WATCHDOG, FORTEAN TIMES, and TOYFARE, and I wouldn't have to worry about building my own.
Which brings me to:
* Building something that works for me, but removes all the scary terms and long process for end-users who just like toys or horror movies.
Certainly, I realize it's a pipe dream: very few people I know who like toys and horror movies would ever be insane enough to index things as explicitly as I'd like, but I envision a roving database, where anyone can fill in certain bits of information, anyone can verify, improve, or correct that information, and it all streams down into personal databases or some iMDB-like master web site. Again, iMDB is the model I'm shooting for. I know nothing about film stock, and I don't need to: someone else can fill that in. But if I'm a fan of Debbie Rochon and I know she made a cameo in CRAZY MONKIES 7: FLINGING POO OLD STYLE, I can add that and move on.
-- Morbus Iff ( i put the demon back in codemonkey ) Culture: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.gamegrene.com/ Mac OS X Hacks: http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596004605/disobeycom icq: 2927491 / aim: akaMorbus / yahoo: morbus_iff / jabber.org: morbus
