Future
The future of the MARC formats is a matter of some debate among libraries. On the one hand, the storage formats are quite complex and are based on outdated technology. On the other, there is no alternative bibliographic format with an equivalent degree of granularity. The billions of MARC records in tens of thousands of individual libraries (including over 50,000,000 belonging to the OCLC consortium alone) create inertia.
Read more about this topic: MARC Standards
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“Self-kindled every atom glows,
And hints the future which it owes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A fixed image of the future is in the worst sense ahistorical.”
—Juliet Mitchell (b. 1940)
“The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)