Things I can’t ask Lorcan Dempsey
OCLC Connexion will export MARC records to Dublin Core, but it won’t ingest records from Dublin Core. Is that right? It seems to be.
I know, I know, granularity and non-specificity and all that good stuff. But Connexion can’t even make a best guess? Or provide some sort of customizable import template?
My IR is eventually going to start taking in electronic theses and dissertations. MPOW wants them in the catalogue. This should be simple—point Connexion at OAI-PMH URL for the ETD collection, harvest (with Connexion feeding the IR the date of last harvest), enhance resulting records by hand, end of story. Heck, if I could just figure out some format that Connexion would eat that, um, isn’t straight-up MARC, I’d do the rest myself, so I would. (I’d even produce MARCXML, and from me that’s a concession, as I loathe clunky, junky MARCXML with a fiery passion.)
Casey Bisson’s point about library standards hemming us in? I’m really, really feeling it right now. We can’t even translate our own standards to our own standards!
(For readers wanting to try this at home: there’s a way. It just only works on Windows. Grrrrr.)
And I’m being completely unfair to Lorcan Dempsey and OCLC. I actually did ask this one, and the answer was “we’re working on it.” I’m just grumpy this week. Ignore me.