Following a suggestion by Avram, I had a deeper look into Marc.js and the possibilities of enhancing MARC support in Zotero. This concerns UNIMARC in particular, but I am trying to address Marc-21, too. There is nothing to be gained and much to be lost by hurrying things in such a central place as the MARC engine is - this is just meant as a starting point.

Follwing just another one of Avram's suggestions, I am trying to explore Frank Benett's multilingual Zotero extensions and their possible integration with MARC.

Project contents

• An importer Marc2.js, capable of importing binary Unimarc- and Marc-21 files. My import tests have been very limited, though. Marc2.js also exposes a "Marc" namespace which is the entry point for translators using the module. This namespace attempts to model MARC records with leaders, field and subfields, exposes a number of handy constants and helper classes that clients can use to convert between Zotero items, MARC records and external MARC representations (textual or binary).

• the JSDoc-generated docs for Marc2.js (obviously insufficient)

• two translators using Marc2.js. The examples intends to demonstrate how Marc translators could become a little cleaner and maybe easier to maintain:

• Library Catalog (Dynix)2.js (test [here]http://www.babord.univ-bordeaux.fr))
• Catalog Collectif de France.js (test here)

• sample data in binary MARC format

• some proposed patches concerning the multilingual features

There is nothing revolutionary in this, and the current MARC support works fine, thanks to all the guys who contributed to it. I just thought we might be able to exploit the richness and granularity of MARC information a little further, and to ease the creation of new MARC based site translators. Let me know about your views on the subject.

Thanks to Avram, Frank and Sylvain for their kind assistance.