[uf-discuss] Re: [Structuredblogging-discuss] microformat for books in a library catalog

[Edward Summers]

We've actually been throwing around some of these on the wiki:
	
	http://microformats.org/wiki/cite
	http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-brainstorming
	http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-examples

MARC, or MARC21 as it is known after the harmonization of USMARC and  
CAN/MARC is a nasty old format from the early 1970s, and not at all  
suited to being represented as semantic HTML imho. MODS [1] is a  
reworking of MARC with more meaningful element names and an XML  
syntax--but it is still relatively complicated, largely because it's  
an outgrowth of MARC itself.

There is quite a bit of interest in the library community in getting  
a microformat established for citations. Given its deployment in  
libraries around the world I think that the xml encoding for openurl  
[2] represents a well trodden path for encoding citation data in  
HTML. It also could lend itself to some really interesting remixing  
in blogs where browser extensions extract citations and fire them off  
at licensed library databases, your local public library, amazon, a  
citation manager, etc.

If there is interest I think we could knock out a draft citation  
microformat using the key/encoded-value names from openurl [3] in  
fairly short order.

//Ed (another)

[1] http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/
[2] http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html
[3] http://alcme.oclc.org/openurl/servlet/OAIHandler? 
verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=Core:Metadata+Formats