In his essay “The Inevitable Gen X Coup,” Brian Mathews says that “MARC is dead.” I don’t think so. I think MARC is under-exploited. Add a touch of FRBR and some interconnection with user metadata, holdings information, and the like, and MARC is still a hugely viable and valuable source of information. It’s not MARC that’s dead, it’s the container we’re using to manipulate and display that bibliographic information. Well, I guess OPACs are “not dead yet” (as my favorite British comedians would say), but they’re moving in that direction.

(Cool! I just discovered FRBR has its very own blog!)