| ||
Tue 2024-04-23
Fri 2024-04-19
Thu 2024-04-18
Mon 2024-04-15
Butterick’s Practical Typography Sat 2024-04-13
Fri 2024-04-12
Wed 2024-04-10
Boy Meets Boy Meets Boys’ Love Tue 2024-04-09
Mon 2024-04-08
Search
Archives
2023
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
One good site
MDN
Nelson Minar
Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License
|
Today's paper brings an obituary for
Henriette
Avram, a pioneer in computing and informatics. She led the
development of
MARC, the standard
electronic library card catalog system used in the US.
MARC is an amazing accomplishment, 35 years of being the primary repository of library catalog information. The main technologies are a simple tagged data format, an encoding, and a variety of communications channels. The social system is very effective, a Wikipedia-like collaborative network of people creating and sharing MARC entries for new materials. By modern standards MARC is pretty clumsy. Three digit tags? Come on! And where are <all> the < pointy brackets/> </all>? But none of that matters; MARC is an information system that was basically designed right and continues to have longevity thanks to its social capital. |
|
