MODS should complement other metadata formats and should provide an alternative
between a very simple metadata format with a minimum of fields and no or little substructure
(for example, Dublin Core) and a very detailed format with many data elements
having various structural complexities such as MARC 21. MODS has a high level
of compatibility with MARC records because it inherits the semantics of the equivalent
data elements in the MARC 21 bibliographic format. Thus, it is richer than Dublin Core
and more compatible with library data than either the Dublin Core or ONIX, which was
developed for the book industry.4 At the same time, it is much simpler than the full
MARC format (either as ISO 2709 or full MARCXML), and more “friendly” because it
uses language-based tags that can be easily understood by anyone dealing with the