MARC format in information architecture – MOL’s experience in integration of libraries’ metadata

The MARC format comes from the age of mainframe computers and sequential processing, but its labeling system works well up today. Information architecture is the knowledge branch often associated with Internet technologies. MARC is still the best format for bibliographic data and the symbol of modern information engineering – Google – indexes and process huge data resources saved in this format. Using the MARC format in library catalogs is obvious, but its effectiveness in real-life strongly depends from data quality. MOL, consolidating library catalogs, practically faced the problems of deduplication and unification of bibliographic data. In the just completed implementation, in Książnica Podlaska, 39 bibliographic databases created locally were joined. MOL has developed an effective method of identifying and deduplicating bibliographic descriptions based on the MARC format. In the ongoing project, consolidation of the public libraries catalogs in Łódź, the scale is twice big. There is also an additional aspect – substitution of low-quality bibliographic data by descriptions copied from the National Library. The presentation discusses experiences of MOL and conclusions from them in the MARC format context.