There is a very interesting new service (tool, Website?) being offered by LibLime, the folks who offer the commercial hosting of the open source ILS, Koha. The service allows anyone to create an online account and to immediately have access to the database of MARC records. MARC records can be edited online and exported in MARC21 format to your own catalog. There is no charge for accessing the records or downloading them.
Additionally, each record can be edited and saved back to the Biblios.net database for others to use or continue to edit. I’m not sure if we can call this the Wikipedia of MARC records, but I don’t think the general concept is too far off base — but correct me if I am wrong!
I encourage everyone to read the two following blog posts about the service. These two posts do such a better job explaining the significance of Biblios.net better than I ever could!
Biblios.net and the Future of Cataloging
If you are interested in trying out Biblios.net on your own, here are some simple instructions:
- Visit biblios.net.
- Click on the link, “Start Cataloging.”
- The first time you load the application, you’ll need to install Google Gears. (Google Gears is a browser extention that lets you work offline but uploads your changes when you go back online.) Loading Google Gears was very straight-forward.)
- Once Google Gears has been installed and you confirm that you’d like a connection with Biblios.net, the application will load.
- Enter a search term.
See the results load at the bottom of the screen.
Select the checkbox next to the desired title to see the MARC fields.
Click on the “Edit” button to make any changes to the fields.
- Click in any field to make any changes.
Click on Tools >> Export >> MARC 21 to download the record to your computer.
- Save the record to your computer in order to upload the record to your ILS.
- It appears that the edited record can also be sent to Biblios.net.
(Forgive the extra bullets! Blogger doesn’t do well with multiple graphics and bullets…)