3.5 XML

MARC (MAchine-Readable Copy) was first developed in the 1960s.¹ MARC set the standards for creating metadata about the bibliographic items in a library. The metadata is used to catalogue the items, to make information about these items available for searching by users, and to simplify the exchange of information between libraries.

Today, the international exchange of library catalogue information is facilitated by MARCXML, an XML language based on MARC21.² MARC21 contains 5 types of data: bibliographic, authority, holdings, community, and classification data format; it has been adopted by "The British Library, the European Institutions, and the major library institutions in the United States and Canada."³ While MARC 21 was a step in the direction of worldwide library catalogue interoperability, MARCXML offers an even better solution. MARCXML was developed to allow "easy sharing of, and networked access to, bibliographic information" between library systems throughout the world.⁴ When library catalogue information is stored in MARCXML format, file conversion is lossless, the data is software independent and "flexible and extensible to allow users to work with MARC data in ways specific to their needs."⁵ Interoperability is crucial for the efficient functioning of the library of the 21st century.

I created a DTD to help a public librarian manage data about the acquisition of books for the library collection. My DTD specifies the following information: the title of the book, the author, ISBN, the cost of the item, the number of items to order, and if the item has been ordered. I then created an XML markup to represent the DTD.

While XML offers many opportunities to the field of librarianship, it is important to note that "relatively few current browsers are able to interpret it" (Lecture Notes, Session 5). As XML-compatible browsers develop, the potential of XML will increasingly be realized.