Network Information Cataloging Research

Network information, for its increasing intricately and severely, is unbalanced and out of control. A lot of unordered information is not the wealth, but the disaster. The Search engine is not perfect because of the low retrieval efficiency, the high rate of mistakable or missing outcome, the large amount of returned information and the unsolved non-text document retrieval. The mode of "one search for all user", can't meet the user's individualized message requirements. So, the describing network resource in metadata, namely the network information catalogue, is attached importance to by people day by day. Metadata is the data about data. MARC and DC are both metadata forms that describe network information. By revising AACR2 and ISBD(ER), increasing 856 field and repacking with SGML or XML, MARC has already become the exquisite method of network information catalogue. Briefly describing network resources, DC is the first-selection. DC's 15 elements can be chosen, be repeated and be arranged at will, still can be limited with language, mode and type. In addition, DC form is elastic and expanding, allowing revising the element, adding or deleting the information items. In developed country, there is already a great breakthrough in the study and application of the network information catalogue. For example, OCLC InterCat's MARC record is up to 45,000, OCLC CORC adopts MARC and DC to describe network resources and sets up the demonstrative database—InterCat and NetFirst, OCLC's Spectrum system can change data of various metadata into USMARC data, MARCit can "pick"website's information from the browser and set up MARC record on OPAC automatically. However, the network information catalogue in our country is still at the starting stage, whose application is basically a blank, whose research mainly introduces the western countries'achievements. At present, National library, Beijing University library and Shanghai library probe actively into the formulation of Chinese metadata standard. There is a large quantity of network information with different qualities, whose catalogue grades, form requirements and description details are all different, which requires cataloguing different network information with different metadata standards. The metadata collection based on DC-MARC, can realize network information catalogue in all level grades and the data conversion of different metadata.