2018 Charleston Library Conference

Libraries’ transition to linked data and the Web is well under way. However, in order to make this transition, libraries must first wean themselves from their current means of data communication, MARC. MARC was a revolution in its day. It allowed data from library card catalogs to be encoded in machine-readable form, enabling the catalog cards to be reproducible on the computer screen and the data to be exchanged freely among libraries. It is a fifty-year-old technology, however, originally designed for magnetic tape-based computers, and now only understood by library systems. In addition, the MARC formats are semantically inexpressive and have isolated libraries from the development of the Web. But for all its downsides, MARC is still the predominant method of communication throughout our Vendor/Library community and the majority of the linked data libraries’ will find essential will need to be generated from their MARC holdings. In October of 2017, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging issued a report from the Task Group on URIs in MARC. The inclusion of URIs in MARC data will insure the cleanest and most efficient means of conversion to linked data.



The session will begin with a brief introduction about the importance of the transition to linked data and a summary of the objectives of the PCC URI task force. A panel of members from three vendors supplying this enhanced service (Backstage Library Works, Casalini Libri, and Proquest/Coutts) will explain their services and how they have responded to the PCC Task Group. Members of the audience can interact with the panel and ask about these services in relationship to their libraries. Members of the audience can expect to learn more about the transition to linked data and how to better prepare their MARC data for this inevitable transition.