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February 2011

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From:
Kristina Spurgin <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:27:46 -0500
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On 2/16/2011 9:18 AM, Myers, John F. wrote:
> I have seen one record in my career when a single field was over
> capacity - still have the printout pinned to my wall.  (And I never
> would have found it without the aid of MarcEdit. -Thanks again Terry!)

I've never run up against MARC's field length limits, either. I just 
want to highlight that, if we are talking about using our structured 
data flexibly, it's not just MARC's limits we need to pay attention to.

We use Endeca as a discovery interface. It slurps data from MARC in the 
catalog. Its database format cannot handle more than 3000 bytes in a 
field, so we have to be careful with notes.

I'd prefer a warning that XXX field of record XXXXX is very long to the 
application trying to fix it for me. If the app does automatically split 
these, I'd definitely want a report of what was done.

It sounds like Terry is leaning toward a hard limit. The number thrown 
out in an earlier mail was 5000. Auto-splitting of a 9000 byte field 
into two would create more work for me, as I need that data in three 
fields instead of two.

Hard coding a limit makes sense from the standpoint of developing a new 
feature. Even if the program auto-splits fields at 5000, this isn't 
going to affect a huge percentage of the records we process.

I'd just encourage eventually incorporating a per-user setting for 
maximum field length. Though we are working with MARC while using 
MARCedit, we are all embedded within different local metadata ecosystems 
that may introduce other constraints.

Lots of exciting new MARCedit developments!
thanks, Terry.
- Kristina

-=-
Kristina M. Spurgin
    E-RESOURCES CATALOGER
      E-Resources & Serials Management, Davis Library
    DOCTORAL CANDIDATE, ADJUNCT INSTRUCTOR
      School of Information & Library Science
                       University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
              CB#3938, Davis Library -- Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890
                            919-962-2050 -- [log in to unmask]

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