Letters

Your attack on fellow librarians…was an outstanding example of yellow journalism (John Berry, "Serve and Starve? Not Now ," LJ 11/1/02, p. 8). It reflects the current wave of attack ads that we all suffered through in the recent election.

Why do you talk about the "high salaries" of the unnamed editor of American Libraries and the "even-better-paid" president of the Urban Libraries Council without mentioning how much you are paid? Does how much you are paid affect your ability to think or have a different view than you have…?

I find your editorial divisive and likely to get the opposite results from those you seek. A director for the past 28 years, I have done everything I could do to get the salaries of the staffs who work with me raised. Sometimes I succeeded, and sometimes I failed…. I work for a county that sets the salaries. I have to do everything that I can to influence local officials who try to do the best job that they can. The last thing that will work with them will be for the American Library Association (ALA) to come down here and tell them to raise salaries.

Calling me and my fellow directors names sure didn't help your cause. I still intend to fight for better salaries…at the local level with local officials. You make too much money to be writing editorials that rely on ad hominem arguments rather than sound logic.
—Thomas L. Moore, MALS, Rosary Coll., 1973; ALA Member; Director, Wake Cty. P.L., Raleigh, NC

"Serve and Starve? Not Now " (LJ 11/1/02, p. 8) was outstanding. I appreciated the case John Berry made and enjoyed (really, really enjoyed) the directness with which he made it. A masterpiece!
—Ross A. Holt, Pres., North Carolina Lib. Assn. & Head of Reference, Randolph Cty. P.L., Asheboro, NC

It has been noted frequently that in times of recession the general public comes to appreciate more the free services of the local public library. The argument that this is not a good time to pursue better salaries is bogus (John Berry, "Serve and Starve? Not Now ," LJ 11/1/02, p. 8). The American Library Association should always be in the business of advocating better salaries for librarians.
—Daragh O'Connor, Dir., Cedar Grove Free P.L., NJ

Roy Tennant's "MARC Must Die " (LJ 10/15/02, p. 26ff.) contains many inaccuracies, misconceptions, and faulty logic. It almost assumes that readers are ignorant of the subject. Contrary to Tennant's view, the use of MARC is expanding all over the world.

Tennant mixes syntax, content rules, element sets, and policies of institutions, labeling them all as problems with MARC…. However, MARC is a format, and as such it defines both a syntax (ISO 2709) and a data element set. Content rules in many fields may be determined outside the format (e.g., AACR2). Institutions decide their individual policies for application of those rules. Conflating MARC, AACR2, and Library of Congress Rule Interpretations reveals Tennant's Anglo-American bias. MARC is used worldwide with a variety of cataloging rules.

Tennant criticizes MARC because few people can read it. As a communications format it was not intended that humans would read MARC. Systems decide how to display the tags and the data within them.

Lack of encoding the relator subfield ($e) has nothing to do with MARC but was a policy of the Library of Congress intended to save cataloger time. It was mainly applied to textual works. Relator terms have been widely used in nonbook items, such as sound recordings, music, and visual materials.

Table of contents data are not "smashed" into a MARC record. The data may be input into the field, or a URL link to an external source may be provided. MARC is neutral as to which method to use. Using XML would require the same choice, "stuffed" between the tags or done as a link.

The world may be turning to XML but that will deal only with syntax. XML needs defined tags, i.e., an element set. Thus dumping MARC in favor of XML doesn't get the elements defined for XML.

Finally, Tennant says we need a new encoding standard. Why couldn't MARC, the element set, whether expressed in XML, by numeric tags, or by language tags, give us the power and flexibility we need?
—Rebecca Guenther, Sr. Networking & Standards Specialist, Library of Congress

How soon we forget (Blaise Cronin, "What a Library Is Not ," LJ 11/15/02, p. 46). Only ten years ago the Joint Free Public Library of Morristown/Morris Township, NJ, fought to keep its building from becoming a bus station in the lawsuit brought against us by Richard Kreimer. Don't these libraries that are becoming homeless shelters by default remember that Morristown ultimately won the case on appeal? And won the right to demand that people in the library use the library as a library, not as their personal flophouse? I remember—I was the director during the lawsuit. I bet my former staff remember, too.
—Nancy Byouk Hammeke, Exec. Dir., Abington Twp. P.L., PA