On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 09:33:01PM -0500, Steve/Ollie/Steven F. Baljkas said:

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 21:18 CDT

Hi, Maggie,

Without P.O'ing you or Chris unnecessarily, I have to say that the idea of wanting to run a library without learning and fully utilising MARC (in whatever flavour and with whatever local usages you determine) is rapidly becoming (already is for most of us in North America) like the idea of running a library without an OPAC in general.

That is, to be clear, not a good idea.

Hi Steven I think in general that your comments are correct. But I think there are some flaws. Namely I think that you overestimate the size and budgets of some libraries. THere are numerous small community libraries with little or no budget run by mainly volunteers all over the world. Should we force them to all have to learn MARC ? I dont think we should, I think we should continue to give people the option to catalogue in a way they chose, I enjoy working on Free software because I enjoy freedom. I dont force, or seek to persuade people to catalogue without MARC, i simply seek to offer them the ability to do so. I think the chances of me teaching the 76 year old librarian at the theosophical society how to catalogue in MARC is very unlikely but he is happily cataloging books now. (Albeit in MARC just hidden from him) So in general I agree cataloguing in MARC is a good idea. However I dont think we should force people to do it. Chris -- Chris Cormack Programmer 027 4500 789 Katipo Communications Ltd chris@katipo.co.nz www.katipo.co.nz