Page 92 - DLIS007_LIBRARY AUTOMATION

Unit 5: Management of Library Automation

Notes
Example: Operating Systems, TCP/IP etc.
Standards are documented agreements containing technical specifications or other precise criteria
to be used consistently as rules, guidelines, or definitions of characteristics, to ensure that
materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose. Field of bibliographic
standards are not limited to the rules only but spread up to the authority files such as person
names, corporate names, subject headings, classification schemes, series names, institution names,
software and standardization form and format etc. In beginning, during the initiation of
automation to library professionals, there was not much focus on bibliographic standards and
were creating databases in any formats. That affected to the automation of their libraries, which
forced them to think over the issue. Now, gradually, the libraries and information centres are
realizing the importance of bibliographic standards. Centres like Information and Library
Network (INFLIBNET), Ahmedabad is playing important role in bringing all libraries together
to work on a single platform of standards with linking under one huge national network i.e.
UGC-Infonet. INFLIBNET Centre is an Inter-University Centre of University Grants Commission
(UGC), working on Academic library system in India. In 1990, UGC launched it as a programme
for five years on pilot basis. On June 1996, the programme was recognized as a full-fledged
Centre.
Different subject headings list are available, developed by different institutions such as LCSH,
Sear’s List of Subject Headings, MeSH, Thesaurus etc. There is various classification schemes
have been developed by different organizations for classifying the books on different subjects.
Functionally, most of the libraries are using the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) for
assigning the Classification Number to the documents. But, under INFLIBNET umbrella, all the
libraries are free to use any classification scheme for classifying the document, as it is very
difficult for any library to reclassify the entire collection based on any new scheme. As per the
library practice any classification scheme can be used as MARC21 has capability to adopt any
kind of classification schemes.
For libraries in India, it is very difficult to strict with any format and standard, due to libraries
are not well recognized by their institutions and having lack of skilled manpower. A financial
crunch with lack of skilled manpower is threat for the Indian libraries for keeping themselves
with the pace of latest technology including the intruders like computer professionals. But to
survive in the field, one has to go through the standards and control the quality in automation.

Did u know? What is MARC Standards? MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloguing) standards
are a set of digital formats for the description of items catalogued by libraries, such as
books. It was developed by Henriette Avram at the US Library of Congress during the
1960s to create records that can be used by computers, and to share those records among
libraries. By 1971, MARC formats had become the national standard for dissemination of
bibliographic data in the United States, and the international standard by 1973. There are
several versions of MARC in use around the world, the most predominant being MARC
21, created in 1999 as a result of the harmonization of U.S. and Canadian MARC formats,
and UNIMARC, widely used in Europe. The MARC 21 family of standards now includes
formats for authority records, holdings records, classification schedules, and community
information, in addition to the format for bibliographic records.

5.2.1 The MARC 21 Formats

The MARC 21 formats are standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic
and related information in machine-readable form. A MARC record involves three elements:
the record structure, the content designation, and the data content of the record.

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