Monday, 15 October 2012

LIBE 465 Lesson 6: Machine Readable Cataloguing (MARC)

Thoughts: 
The activity this week was challenging.  I felt so overwhelmed with so numbers and symbols.  I think I had to read the assigned and suggested readings at least 3-4 times each.  I went through each tag section on the LOC step by step.  It took so much time.  I’m not looking forward to assignment 2 where we need to create MARC record for 15 items.

I noticed that in most cases the MARC records between Amicus and LOC were identical (even down to the inputting error for one record).  There were 2 cases where I found that LOC and Amicus differed.  First, I couldn’t find the record on LOC for a Canadian published book.  I guess that makes sense since LOC is American.  Second, Amicus has 2 different records for the same item (a DVD).  One record listed the basic title, while the other listed the full title (with the subtitle).  

I appreciate the strict rules and procedures for creating a MARC record.  It provides a consistent format that all librarians can use and understand.  It makes for sharing information and items (like in an interlibrary loan) easier to locate and retrieve.  I tip my hat to all the library technicians and librarians that sit behind a computer all day putting all this information in a database.

No comments:

Post a Comment