Marcia Mardis Rolls Out MARC in a Minute
RSSBy Lauren Barack
A new program called Web2MARC now helps school librarians capture science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) materials online—updating resources that can quickly become outdated due to the nature of their subject matter, says its developer Marcia Mardis, associate director of the PALM Center at Florida State University. Many school librarians find cataloging digital resources into library catalogs challenging because they "don't know how to catalog and many school librarians are not comfortable collecting science resources and digital resources," says Mardis by email. Working with programmer Casey McLaughlin, Mardis released the first version of the tool six months ago and expects to roll out a second beta version in about a week, she says. So far, response "has been wildly popular with everyone who's tried it," she adds. School librarians are likely to adopt the tool quickly, as U.S. students continue to lag behind their global counterparts in mastering STEM subject matter and educators are often eager to look online for the most relevant and new materials. Mardis began working on the project in late 2009 after receiving a $411,519 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and spending the first year collecting data about the current state of cataloguing, digital resources collection, and technology integration practices. Then she started to develop the tool with McLaughlin. She hopes that school librarians will benefit from Web2MARC, believing that more tools and resources should be crafted for this target group—one Mardis says should be leading how educational resources are managed and integrated in schools. "I do think librarians are forgotten in the development and promotion of web resources," she says. "I'd like to see a world where the very expensive library management software acts as the first point of entry for information in the school. Everything's selected and described by the information specialist on staff—the school librarian!" This article originally appeared in the newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe. I love it thank you. I would like to look at the site but the URL doesn't work. More information, please. This works:
http://dl2sl.org/web2marc
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"The Web2MARC tool allows school librarians to automatically generate MARC (Machine-Readable-Cataloging) records for anything they see on the web, STEM-related or not, and tailor the records to their local needs—no cataloging required," says Mardis (left), who spoke to SLJ about her program last year. All that's required is entering a URL, and Web2MARC will generate a MARC record. The tool works with Alexandria, Destiny, and other widely-used catalog software.
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