Abstrakt: |
The North American MARC records marketplace is examined based on the results of an investigation study commissioned by the Library of Congress as a major institution providing bibliographic records almost for free to a wide community of users. The overall cataloguing capacity in North America, the primary distribution pathways and channels for sharing records and the actual issues concerning backlogs, copy cataloguing redundancy and shortcomings in cooperative cataloguing are explored. There is a conflict in the market for cataloguing records, mainly due to difficulties, in the library market, to accommodate community values and commercial values while the market itself provides insufficient incentives to stimulate additional original cataloguing. Some possible solutions are proposed, like centralized creation of cataloguing records, a new model allowing records to be built mechanically based on FRBR through accumulation of metadata from institutional records or other record loads, improvement of the incentives to contribute original cataloguing records, a change in the effort/reward ratio, in which those entities creating records are fully compensated for the associated costs. The Italian situation of MARC21 records production and use is briefly examined, highlighting actual library practices in copy and original cataloguing, difficulties in deriving records from the SBN network due to format conversion implications. The problems associated with the scarce market of bibliographic records are discussed and possible solutions and perspectives are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |