MARC Records

I loved Roy Tennant’s piece at LJ today entitled ‘MARC Horrors“.

He points to a funny (but too true) video by

MARCTHULU video
(2:48 minutes)

Roy transcribed the first part of the video to whet your interest:

“Deep within the bowels of systems on the Horizon,
Of systems from beyond the Millennium,
Of systems known only to small aliens as V-ger
We see the signs of MARC records —

MARC records that should not be —
MARC records with control characters in the leaders —
MARC records that require 25 characcters per tag and yet have no indicators —
MARC records that although apparently valid, have two 245 tags —
And syntaxes and obsolete fields that have not existed since time beyond memory —
Since eons beyond which were known….”

It’s likely a must see for the geekiest librarians.

Stephen