FROM CARD TO MARC: AN INTELLIGENT SCANNING AND FORMAT RECOGNITION SERVICE

The preceding pages have concentrated on the approach to retrospective conversion which is based on the assumption that the library engaged in recon will wish to buy in externally created records, for reasons of cost and/or to upgrade and improve the intellectual quality and consistency of its catalogue. The alternative is to translate one's existing catalogue records into machine‐readable form more or less as they stand. This is obviously the only recourse if the records are such that they are unlikely to be available elsewhere, particularly so with rare collections or with foreign materials where no national MARC service exists. It may also be a preferred option if the library has, in its existing catalogue records, qualities it wishes to preserve. It certainly avoids the problem of how to add in local data. For this second approach, there are two basic techniques: keyboarding; and scanning, using a visual character recognition device. In either case, there remains the problem of tagging the record so that it may be manipulated, accessed etc. by the various elements such as author, title, imprint, class‐mark etc. For the keyboarding approach, the solution has been to mark up or encode, to greater or lesser degrees of sophistication, the copy from which the keyboarder works. For records read by scanners the solution has been sought in Automatic Format Recognition. There are a number of successful uses of AFR, but it cannot be said to have found widespread application. However, a new service from OPTIRAM/LIBPAC offers very sophisticated scanning with customised format recognition software to produce output in MARC or any required format. A full and more detailed account of the system by Martin Harrison of LIBPAC will appear in the July issue of Program. The account here is, I hope, sufficient to give a guide to what appears to be a system of above‐average intelligence. Some user‐reaction is included in the following article by Marion Ralls on the recon activities at Edinburgh.