To: jul@oclc.org
In-Reply-To: jul@oclc.org's message of Tue, 27 Sep 1994 18:35:19 -0700 <94Sep27.183531pdt.2761@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Subject: Re: URCs and the world into which they are born
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Message-Id: <94Sep27.192115pdt.2760@golden.parc.xerox.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 19:21:11 PDT
I think we would all go along with a 'motherhood' statement that asked
us to make every effort, due dilligence, to be informed by all of the
previous work on topics related to what we're working on.
On the other hand, we're also trying to narrow the focus of what we're
working on to be something that's achievable, without asking every
committee member to study the entire field of library science.
In order to make progress, let me urge everyone participating to
assume that we respect your credentials and the significance of
history, etc., and just focus on the documents we're developing.
Michael Mealling has prepared a document on URCs, which includes both
a set of technical requirements and a proposal for representation
document meta-information which he believes meets the requirements.
If, as a student of the history of librarianship and information
science, you believe he's missed some important requirements, please
say so what they are, in specific, technical terms.
If you believe that the specification he's proposed doesn't meet the
requirements, or you have some alternate, specific suggestion to make
as to how to improve the specification, that would be useful too.
Now, I know that it is self-contradictory for me to deliver this
sermon about not delivering sermons to us all, and I hope you'll
forgive me.
If you mean to proposal that URCs be MARC records, then lets have the
proposal more directly, and understand what additional technical
requirements are there that might cause us to choose MARC format over
some other format.
Thanks,
Larry