MARC training = done

At last!  I have conquered the TMQ MARC21 in Your Library Part 1: MARC & Bibliographic Info Fundamentals training course!  It did finally get helpful in the last module when it went into describing the differences among tags, fields, delimiters, indicators, etc.  I do think that growing up with computers makes it easier to grasp the concepts behind MARC as it is simply another form of coding akin to HTML or CSS.  The use of the term "tag" alone has become common place today due to folksonomies and Facebook photo identification.  One module of the training focused on why MARC is used in libraries.  It seems obvious to me, but then again, I'm the daughter of a librarian so a lot of library stuff seems rather intuitive to me but not to the general public, as I've found.  One reason that the training gave for using MARC records is because libraries have been using MARC for decades so, basically, it would not make sense to change it now.  While I understand this point and acknowledge it as a decently valid argument, I couldn't help but think that someone should be saying, "If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge as well?"  It seemed to be implying that we are just sticking with it because it would be too much work to change it rather than highlighting the fact that it simply still serves its purpose quite effectively.  In any case, my boss directed me to the OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards handbook which she finds quite useful - I bookmarked it.

So remember how I was saying the other day that Dan Savage and his husband were the grand marshals of Sunday's NYC Gay Pride Parade?  Well, it turns out that just days before, he was the opening session speaker at the annual ALA conference.  Yes, if I was up on my library world happenings, I would have known this, but I'm not gonna lie, I was kind of trying to ignore all of the conference buzz since I couldn't be there.  Clearly it only worked to a point anyway.

Today's mileage: 3.13 mi