Elliot Williams (Texas)

Code

Cross stitch
Designed and stitched by Elliot Williams

“Most catalogers are intimately familiar with the MARC 21 standard, which is used to encode the descriptions we create about library resources. But non-catalogers, including other librarians, often think of MARC as a kind of impenetrable code. That sometimes makes the work that catalogers do seem foreign and mysterious, rather than simply a technical skill that anyone can learn. With this piece, I wanted to play off the idea of MARC as a secret code. I surrounded the MARC 21 logo with a border of MARC tags (e.g. 040, 110, 245) depicted in Morse code–another long-standing (some might say antiquated) encoding standard that serves a need but often seems impenetrable to people who don’t use it.”

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Elliot Williams works at the Texas Digital Library in Austin, Texas.

This piece is of the MARC 21 logo cross stitched in blue and black. It is surrounded by MARC field tags written out in Morse code. The Morse code border says: LDR 040 110 245 264 300 522 545 650 655 856.