LOC: MARC's Days are Numbered

In one of the clearest statements yet from the Library of Congress that MARC has outlived its usefulness, the Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative has released an initial plan for their work that is quite revealing. Some quotes:

“…the Library of Congress is committed to developing, in collaboration with librarians, standards experts, and technologists a new bibliographic framework that will serve the associated communities well into the future.” (from Deanna Marcum’s cover note)

“The new environment should be agnostic to cataloging rules…”

“The new bibliographic framework project will be focused on the Web environment, Linked Data principles and mechanisms, and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a basic data model.”

The document includes an appendix: “A Brief History of MARC 21” that includes the latest information about bibliographic initiatives (e.g., exposing data as linked data on the web) undertaken by the Library of Congress.

Marcum specifically calls for comments to the public Bibliographic Transition listserv, and nominations for members for the advisory or technical committees to ndmso@loc.gov. “It is in this spirit of openness and transparency,” Marcum writes, “that we will proceed with the development of a bibliographic framework for the 21st century.” Please forgive me for noting how closely this parallels an article I wrote for Library Hi Tech eight years ago, after my provocative “MARC Must Die” piece in Library Journal.