The challenges of electronic texts n the library: Bibliographic control and access

This paper considers special problems in providing bibliographic control of and access to electronic texts and how they are being addressed by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2d ed. 1988 rev., and the MAchine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standards used for encoding bibliographic data on the computer. It summarizes the concepts and development of the USMARC Format for Bibliographic Data, computer files specifications, and identifies particular issues in providing bibliographic control of electronic texts including identification, description, location, and access. It explores attempts to address these difficult issues surrounding electronic texts, particularly in the MARC formats, as libraries are adapting to the growth of the Internet and the wide availability and proliferation of many types of electronic items. The paper reviews specific projects that attempt to provide better description of and access to electronic texts, including the OCLC Internet Resources Project, attempts of the USMARC Advisory Group of the American Library Association to enhance the MARC formats to provide location and access to online information resources, standards under development for locators and identifiers of Internet resources (Uniform Resource Identifiers), and some projects involving access to electronic texts. In addition, the author reviews the relationship between Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and MARC.published or submitted for publicatio