Congratulations! \u00a0You’ve installed MarcEdit and now you are ready to start using the application. \u00a0But where do you start? \u00a0Like most applications, MarcEdit’s user interface has gone through extensive testing, but the application has enough tools and functions to make even seasoned MarcEdit users periodically confused. \u00a0 So where does one start? \u00a0Well, if you are new to the application, it’s probably best to step back and talk about what happens when you first run the application because the decisions made at first run, significantly impacts how MarcEdit will interact with the data that it processes. \u00a0Understanding how these initial configuration settings shape a users interactions with the program can help a one gain a better understanding of how MarcEdit interacts with the data, as well as provides users the knowledge that they need to configure MarcEdit appropriately so that the application works for them, within their local environments.<\/p>\n
One of the things that makes MarcEdit unique among many of the MARC processing tools and libraries is that MarcEdit is largely MARC agnostic. \u00a0Does this mean that MarcEdit was designed to deny or doubt the possibility of a universal MARC format? \u00a0No, but wouldn’t that be great? \u00a0No, what is meant by this is that MarcEdit does not presume a specific “flavor” or implementation of the MARC structure. \u00a0While librarians in North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and many European nations will largely utilize a “flavor” of MARC known as MARC21, other countries utilize their own national implementations of the specification or utilize a largely failed attempt at creating a pseudo-universal MARC implementation known as UNIMARC. \u00a0The point being, there are a wide range of MARC format implementations found throughout the library community, and many more one off MARC implementations in libraries that are utilized to provide descriptions of events, patrons, etc. used primarily by public library integrated library systems.<\/p>\n
[table] [\/table]<\/p>\n Traditionally, library application development that targeted MARC processing would choose a “flavor” of MARC to support. \u00a0This was done for many valid reasons, many of them related to the ability to build data validation into the tool set. \u00a0While MarcEdit does provide a separate validation engine, MarcEdit was designed from the beginning as a universal MARC processing utility, purposefully not targeting any one specific implementation of MARC, but rather, providing tools that could be utilized with any MARC “flavor”. \u00a0What’s more, by separating the MARC processing from validation, MarcEdit could provide a flexible validation engine that users could customize to support their own validation needs.<\/p>\n However, MarcEdit’s MARC agnosticism comes at a price, in order for the program to maintain the separation between implementation and structural format, users need to configure the application so that it understands what “flavor” of data is being processed. \u00a0This is primarily so MarcEdit knows what fields are titles, authors, main entries for the purpose of display and sorting, as well as providing information regarding characterset preferences and diacritic processing so that the MARCEngine can generate records with the desired character encoding. \u00a0All these configuration options are set when MarcEdit is run for the first time, you just may not have realized it.<\/p>\n When a user first installs and runs MarcEdit for the first time, the Preferences window (Figure 1) is displayed prior to running the program.<\/p>\n The preferences window allows the user to set configuration options in 11 distinct areas:<\/p>\n One first run, MarcEdit will set options related to all of these functional areas. \u00a0By default, MarcEdit will configure itself to work as universally as possible, making specific data settings to support MARC21 (since that is currently the most widely used MARC flavor).<\/p>\n In late 2013, MarcEdit’s start page was modified to allow users to self select their most commonly used tools for placement on the start page.\u00a0 The program allows users to place 4 user defined options on the front page — allowing users to customize their MarcEdit application home page to better reflect how they are using the tool.<\/p>\n Users are able to make these changes by modifying the application’s Main Window Preferences.\u00a0 To customize the MarcEdit home page, users should open the application preferences and select the Main Window option.\u00a0 Users will see the following Screen:<\/p>\n This page displays all the current MarcEdit functions that can be “linked” from the Startup window.\u00a0 By default, MarcEdit selects the first 4 options on the list when the program is installed.<\/p>\n To change these settings, a user simply needs to uncheck the tools that they do not want to appear on the MarcEdit Startup Screen, and check the tools that should appear on the Startup Screen.\u00a0 MarcEdit will limit user selects to no more than 4 items, given screen size limitations.\u00a0 Once a user has selected the items that they wish to appear on the Startup Screen, the user just needs to click “OK” or “Apply” for the changes to be configured.<\/p>\n [table] [\/table]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Figure 3: Language Preferences<\/p><\/div>\n Over the years, a very large and active international user community has developed around MarcEdit. \u00a0In an effort to provide better support for that community and non-native English speakers in general, I’ve been experimenting with different types of language options. \u00a0At this point, MarcEdit utilizes a concept of language packs.<\/p>\n [table] [\/table]<\/p>\n A language pack is a special resource file that includes all of the string data used by the program. \u00a0These packages are generated automatically by a program that scans MarcEdit for new text strings. \u00a0The process then utilizes Microsoft’s language translation tools to provide an automated translation of the string. \u00a0Since these are machine translations, they sometimes are hilariously bad — but users are welcome to change them, update them, and provide the changes back to the community.<\/p>\n Figure 4: Export Settings<\/p><\/div>\n MarcEdit includes the ability to export MARC records directly into record management systems that support TCP\/IP import. \u00a0This functionality emulated the OCLC Gateway Export functionality found in tools such as Passport for Windows, CatME, and Connexion. \u00a0Users wishing to utilize this option to make sure that their integrated library system (ILS) support TCP\/IP exports, and speak to their system administrator to determine the host name and port number setup to accept exported data.<\/p>\n MarcEdit includes two additional options. \u00a0The timeout option determines how long MarcEdit will wait before giving up on a connection. \u00a0By default, the timeout is set for 30 seconds. \u00a0The second option, Export Receipt, will capture any data returned by the ILS as part of an export transaction and will present that information back to the user after the export has been completed. \u00a0Many ILS systems, like Innovative Interface’s Millennium system, provide a detailed log of records created, record numbers and errors when data is passed through the system’s export port. \u00a0Enabling this option will allow MarcEdit to capture that information.<\/p>\n [table] [\/table]<\/p>\n [table] [\/table]<\/p>\n Figure 5: MARCEngine Settings<\/p><\/div>\n The MARCEngine is one of the key components of the MarcEdit application. \u00a0The MARCEngine processing library controls all aspects of processing both MARC and non-MARC by the application. \u00a0The MARCEngine options are broken into 4 grouping: General Options, XML Options, XSLT Engine options and Unicode Normalization. \u00a0Individuals working with MarcEdit and working with data that is\u00a0not<\/strong> in MARC21 or are international users working with diacritical data should carefully consider which of these options will best meet their needs. \u00a0Likewise, individuals utilizing MarcEdit to process XML encoded data or are using MarcEdit to output XML encoded data should evaluate these options to ensure that MarcEdit can best meet their individual needs.<\/p>\n General Options<\/strong><\/p>\n XML Options<\/strong><\/p>\n XSLT Engine<\/strong><\/p>\n MarcEdit includes two XSLT processing engines are part of the application; the MSXML engine which is a part of the .NET framework, and Saxon.NET, developed by Michael Kay [ref]Saxon XSLT and XQuery Project,\u00a0http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/saxon\/<\/a>[\/ref]. \u00a0Both engines have their strengths and weaknesses. \u00a0By default, MarcEdit selects the MSXML engine, since this XSLT engine has been optimized for speed…but that speed does come with a cost. \u00a0Users are encouraged to evaluate the differences between the two options and make the choice that best suites their circumstances.<\/p>\n [table] <\/p>\n Unicode Normalization<\/strong><\/p>\n With \u00a0more and more library metadata being encoded or translated into UTF-8, issues related to Unicode normalization are becoming more common. \u00a0While many metadata libraries believe that simply moving metadata into UTF-8 will fix the indexing issues that libraries currently face when working with diacritical data, the solution isn’t that simple. \u00a0What many people do not realize, is that not all Unicode data is created the same. \u00a0One of the issues related to MARC-8 encoded data is that diacritical data isn’t represented as a single value. \u00a0For example, and A with an acute is represented by the letter ‘a’ and a value representing the acute symbol. \u00a0When indexed, the diacritical information is lost. \u00a0The same thing can occur with UTF-8 data depending on the normalization in use. \u00a0Within the library community, the U.S. Library of Congress recommends the use of the Compatibility Decomposition or KD notation. \u00a0This notation emulates the MARC-8 encoding structure, in that diacritical data are represented as two separate codepoints: a codepoint representing the ‘a’ and a codepoint representing the diacritical mark. \u00a0Display of the diacritic happens at the display level, but for indexing purposes, the diacritical information is lost. \u00a0For users outside of the United States, the preferred Unicode normalization is the Canonical Decomposition or C notation. \u00a0In this case, diacritical data is represented as a single codepoint, so the ‘a’ with an acute is represented by a single value representing that character. \u00a0The diacritical information is then represented correctly at the display level and is indexed correctly. \u00a0Presently, the U.S. Library of Congress specifies the use of the KD notation for all records encoded in MARC21 to ensure the ability to round-trip data between MARC-8 and UTF-8.<\/p>\n [table] Figure 6: Update Settings<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Due to the irregular nature of the MarcEdit development cycle, tracking and managing updates manually can be a laborious process. \u00a0To simplify the tracking and installation of updates, MarcEdit includes a set of configuration options that allows the program to self manage itself. \u00a0When enabled, MarcEdit will automatically track new application updates and notify the user when a new build \u00a0is available for download. \u00a0For enterprise users, MarcEdit can be configured to not only track updates, but self install, by embedding authentication credentials into the application.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0[attr style=”width:90px”], “At one point, there were over 30+ national implementations of the MARC format. \u00a0MarcEdit is able to process each of these flavors because each MARC implementation utilizes ISO 2709 to define the implementation of it’s record structure.”<\/p>\n
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MarcEdit Startup Preferences<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”Please note, some preference changes will require an application restart to be applied.\u00a0 Generally, MarcEdit will indicate when this is the case.”<\/p>\n
Language Preferences<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”Language packs are just XML files that include the English language strings found in the application. \u00a0While I attempt to keep the language packs up to day, they do not currently contain all of the string data found in the application.”<\/p>\n
Export Settings<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”While capturing the Export Receipt will return logging information about a specific set of transactions, it also significantly slows down the process since MarcEdit must process one record at a time. \u00a0Turning off this option allows MarcEdit to process export requests in larger record groups.”<\/p>\n
<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”Use caution when disabling the Export Receipt option. \u00a0MarcEdit has the ability to export thousands of records per second, and some ILS systems may not be able to handle more than one record at a time. \u00a0Consult your system administrators for guidance.”<\/p>\n
MARCEngine Settings<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”], “Please note, users wishing to modify the MARCXML stylesheet should not modify the default stylesheet provided by the application. \u00a0MarcEdit treats that file as protected, and will overwrite the source file on update. \u00a0Users should create their own MARCXML stylesheet if they wish to make modifications.”[\/table]<\/li>\n
<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”], “MarcEdit’s native Option is capable of processing MARCXML data at high speeds and with no size limitations.”[\/table] [table]
<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”], “The largest MARCXML file I \u00a0have processed, is ~1 TB utilizing the Native Option.”[\/table]<\/li>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”], “The XSLT Engine option sets the default XSLT engine to be used by MarcEdit. \u00a0However, users can override this default value and specify a specific XSLT engine at the transformation level.”[\/table]<\/p>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”While the KD notation is recommended for purposes of compatibility with MARC-8, MarcEdit has the ability to maintain that compatibity between UTF-8 data encoded using the C notation and MARC-8. \u00a0The process occurs seamlessly for the user.”[\/table]<\/p>\n
Update Settings<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>[attr style=”width:90px”],”When automatic updates are enabled, MarcEdit will attempt to ‘phone home’ each time the application is run. \u00a0The update process retains no information from the transaction, save for regular web statistics. \u00a0For information about what information is capture and how it is recorded, please see the MarcEdit Privacy Policy.”[\/table]<\/span><\/li>\n
\u00a0File Association Settings<\/h3>\n