Librarians help!
December 1, 2018 12:11 PM   Subscribe

We are working on an assignment for our MLIS and are having trouble identifying the Data Content Standard for https://catalogue.outontheshelves.ca/ (Out On the Shelves). How do you guys usually figure something like that out? Some websites will tell you, but not this one. Would one of you be able to tell us the answer, alternatively teaching us how to help ourselves next time? We appreciate your time and labour!
posted by ipsative to Computers & Internet (3 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you look at any of the records in the database, you can see that the catalog is using the open source system koha, based on the URLs for any of the items. The records display in both MARC and ISBD.
posted by gnat at 12:30 PM on December 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I know this is not the venue for chat, so I'll just clarify my question once because I realize it was very unclearly formulated (my assignment partner is a bit stressed out, but she's off to read so I'll take more time to be detailed now).

We have serious complaints about the course we're taking (basics of bibliographic control) and both professor and TA have been notoriously unhelpful, so we're not going to that well again. The course has emphasized critique of standards and social justice, but most of us are hearing about RDA, MARC, ISBD, etc. for the first time.

Our final assignment is to analyze a Descriptive System (we think she means a catalogued collection of information and its infrastructure) and identify its three core elements: content standard, markup format, and controlled vocabulary/data value standard.

As I understand it, MARC is the markup format and ISBD is a human readable format. But do these three core elements overlap in their definitions? Can one find the content standard coded in a MARC record, for instance (and if so, where?), or does MARC always work with AARD2 or RDA?

We have the controlled vocabulary/data value standard part figured out. We're just confused about the other two and how they are distinct from each other.

Again, thanks!
posted by ipsative at 12:45 PM on December 1, 2018


Best answer: You can (sometimes) find the content standard(s) coded in a MARC field. For MARC records using RDA, you should see an 040 $e that says rda. AACR2 records don't usually have that subfield populated, but there's a position in the leader that can also be used. If you're familiar with the differences between content standards, you can also recognize different content standards in MARC based on how certain data is formatted, etc.

For this database, looking at the 040 for the MARC for this record shows that they've got at least one MARC record that uses RDA. It would be pretty common for a library to have a mix of RDA and AACR2 records (and probably some hybrid records as well.)

Hope that helps you get started.
posted by Carol O at 1:27 PM on December 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


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