[Koha-devel] Storing non-MARC data in biblio_metadata

[David Cook]

Hi all,

 

How do people feel about storing non-MARC metadata in the biblio_metadata
table?

 

Typically, the "format" column contains the string "marcxml" and the
"metadata" column contains the MARCXML text, but it seems like someone could
put in "RDF/XML" and RDFXML text instead?

 

The one barrier to that is the "marcflavour" column which is a "NOT NULL"
column. I mean. that could be an empty string. but I wonder if there's a way
of de-MARCing that column? 

 

I'm trying to think of analogs for other scenarios. I mean in the case of
RDF. you might have RDF/XML or JSON-LD. which are separate formats but
they're both "RDF". 

 

I wonder if "marcflavour" could be better known as "schema", or "model", or
"standard", or something else?

 

I know choosing wording is hard. For instance, MARC::File::XML
(https://metacpan.org/pod/MARC::File::XML) refers to UNIMARC and MARC21 as
formats. Dublin Core and MODS are often referred to as schemas. MARC21 is
often called a standard. According to
http://www.loc.gov/marc/unimarctomarc21.html, UNIMARC and MARC21 are
formats. RDF gets called a data model with different data serialization
formats.

 

I know it would probably be a lot of work to change "marcflavour" to
something else, especially since we've all been familiar with "marcflavour"
for many years now, but I'm thinking maybe it's time we change that name. 

 

David Cook

Systems Librarian

Prosentient Systems

72/330 Wattle St

Ultimo, NSW 2007

Australia

 

Office: 02 9212 0899

Direct: 02 8005 0595

 

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