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To: Mr James Elliot
Bibliographic Policy & Liaison
National Bibliographic Service
The British Library
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7BQ
SMB/mt/31 October 2000
Dear James
MARC Harmonisation 2000
The Library Association is pleased to have the opportunity to comment on the Harmonisation 2000 consultation and a response form is enclosed.
The Library Association is the professional body which represents some 25,000 librarians and information workers in the United Kingdom. Under the terms of its Royal Charter, The Association has a duty to promote high quality library and information services and to advise government, employers and others on all aspects of library and information provision.
As the Special Interest Group of the Association the Cataloguing and Indexing Group represents just over 2000 of these members.
There is a need to be aware of the growth in types of resources to be catalogued and we appreciate and support the British Library's aim to simplify and make cataloguing processes cheaper via closer collaboration and facilitation of record exchange.
Our response to support adoption of the full MARC 21 format, with implementation of all approved changes at once, is based on our concern to take a strategic approach to long term decisions about the future relationship of the MARC formats with Metadata standards. Part of this strategic consideration must bet to influence future developments and it will be important to be a player in the MARC 21 infrastructure. To remain with UKMARC will exclude us from this process.
We would ask you to balance UK user needs with your own internal agenda and to acknowledge that although it is expensive to change, it will in the long term be expensive to remain separate. We advocate immediate implementation of approved changes to the format, however users should not be forced into overnight changes and we feel that the British Library has a responsibility to lead on and encourage training initiatives.
Yours sincerely,
Sue Brown
Chair, LA CIG
The Library Association
October 2000 |
