First, an introduction: I am a cataloger/librarian. I have very limited programming experience (2-3 classes--Pascal, C(++?) and database introduction), and am attempting to teach myself Perl with Coriolis' Perl Black Book. I have only made it through parts of the book, enough to understand the basics of the various files (modules) in MARC::Record.
Morbus Iff wrote: > Is the "title" of a book always considered the title AND author? Or is the "author" and "statement of responsibility" the .. . . >same thing? Does $a always end in a slash if $b doesn't exist? What if $a, $h, $p, $b, and $c are all used? Is that order >(per the LC UMB doc) the method they should be strung together, separated by slashes? Is the ending period, generated >by MARC::Batch an AACR thingy, or just convention? According to AACR2 rules, the title proper of the book consists of $a $n $p. Next comes either $h (General Material Description), $b (other title information), and $c (statement of responsibility). $c is (as far as I know) always preceeded by /. A recent change to the MARC21 format allows $n or $p to follow, as well as preceed, $b. $h follows the title proper. A 245 field always ends in a period. In another message, Morbus Iff wrote: >And moving further on, Example 3 starts talking about "warnings", and follows up with "strict_off". This confused me, >as I tried to associate their meaning with what I know about Perl's own warning and strict pragma's This is something I was wondering about, in attempting to process a few files of records. I turned "strict_off", to get through the entire file, but the exported records have had "Invalid indicators forced to blanks." I would like to get these records, and any others that generate errors, and save them (as originally read) to a separate file, in order to correct the errors. Since I don't fully understand Perl, my solution was to modify MARC::File, by adding a method, "skipget()", based on the existing "skip()", but returning $rec : undef, instead of 1 : undef. My understanding is that this should return the raw, unchanged marc string from the original file. In another message, Morbus Iff wrote: >Is the LC server the "definitive" Z39.50 database? If I suck down a record from there, send it to my database, >add more information, etc., etc., how does it get back to the LC? Does it? Would the way I'd contribute be >to simply run and promote my own Z39.50 server? As far as I understand it, Z39.50 is simply a transmission protocol. LC's catalog is a large souce of freely accessible records, which greatly assists in the cooperative cataloging process. If you get a record from there and change it, the changes will probably not make it back to LC. (Generally LC maintains its own records, accepting change requests through the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) [1]) The easiest way (in this context) to distribute your records would probably be to run and promote your own Z39.50 server. [1]CPSO Web site: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/ Hope this helps, Bryan Baldus Cataloger Quality Books, Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses 1-800-323-4241x460 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
