The most surprising aspect of developing\u00a0MarcEdit over the years is\u00a0the wide use and adoption of MarcEdit outside of North America. \u00a0While the MarcEdit user community is sometimes difficult to measure, the current active user community fluctuates\u00a0between 15,000-20,000 users.\u00a0Looking at update logs, I can see that MarcEdit usage (number of times the program is opened) is well over a million usages a year (counting just those users utilizing the automated update features). \u00a0From the file logs, it’s possible to gather abstract usage information around geography, and the diversity of the user community speaks to the universality of the issues shared by libraries world-wide. \u00a0While North American users are the primary user community, significant communities in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East are driving MarcEdit’s development to become more international and consider issues that primarily affect non-English language audiences. \u00a0This includes being sensitive to character encoding issues, supporting other national MARC systems (like UNIMARC) and facilitating the migration of library metadata (which is still largely in MARC8), into UTF8 or more diacritic friendly encodings.<\/p>\n
Over the past 13+ years, I’ve had the distinct privilege of working with thousands of talented librarians around the world because of MarcEdit. \u00a0Its opened doors, opportunities, and honestly, sometimes made me look a lot smarter than I am. \u00a0I feel indebted to a library community that has encouraged me to cultivate my interests and has given me an opportunity to do something that I thoroughly enjoy. \u00a0So, I want to give something back, to say thank you for the time you’ve invested in me, by allowing me to invest a little bit of time in all of you. \u00a0This book is my gift back to a community that has given so much to me.<\/p>\n
It’s also an experiment of sorts. \u00a0Over the past year, I’ve had a number of offers from publishers to take this concept and turn it into a formally published work. \u00a0I like the idea, I enjoy writing, and it’s a medium well understood by promotion and tenure committees. But, the idea left me feeling a bit like a\u00a0hypocrite. \u00a0I’ve invested time and energy evangelizing the significant benefits to be had from making one’s work more open. \u00a0I’ve called on other faculty to take risks within the promotion and tenure process, and experiment with what it means to publish content. \u00a0I’ve done this from behind the safety of my own tenure. \u00a0However, having jumped back on the promotion and tenure treadmill, I found myself becoming more conservative in how I was interacting with faculty and how I was approaching my own research. That bothered me, so I’m making the choice to think differently about this publication and about how to\u00a0measure the impact of my\u00a0work. \u00a0Will it work out? \u00a0Who knows? \u00a0But, this is what we do as researchers. \u00a0We experiment. We try new things. We evaluate the results. \u00a0 My hope is that by publishing this document out in the open, the final product will be richer\u00a0than it would have been otherwise.\u00a0This\u00a0will reach more people, have a wider impact, and be a living, breathing document that can be revised and updated as the work we do in libraries continues. \u00a0I hope this is a little subversive, and causes people to re-evaluate what it means to publish their research, and how we reward people for their intellectual output. \u00a0It’s a journey that I hope we can take together, and I look forward to it.<\/p>\n
One of the benefits of looking at more non-traditional publishing options, is the\u00a0freedom to experiment with different formats and ways of conveying information. \u00a0In fact, it’s one of the things that I find exciting about this project: the opportunity to look at mixing media formats together to create a richer experience for the reader. \u00a0I may not always succeed, but that is certainly the intent. \u00a0The format of this text will be broken into “Books”, which will each cover a high level concept related to the program. \u00a0These “Books” will be separated into chapters which will address specific topics related to the broader “Book”. \u00a0 Within each chapter, I will\u00a0endeavor to include a road map detailing the topics to be discussed. \u00a0Peppered throughout these discussions will be Tips and Tricks.<\/p>\n
[table]<\/p>\n
![\"tip\"](\"http:\/\/marcedit.reeset.net\/learning_marcedit\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/tip.png\")
<\/a>Tips and Tricks will be highlighted within the text to note specific points of interest.<\/p>\n