From the IFLA satellite meeting on RDA, Gordon Dunsire's presentation, RDA Vocabularies and Concepts. It was one of the most interesting parts of the day.
13 October 2008 - full draft of content released in online product for comment. Ready for final review
19 January 2009 - comment period closes
Early March 2009 - Joint Steering Committee (JSC) and Committee of Principals (CoP) meet in Chicago. JSC will go over comments generated from final draft and incorporate them into RDA.
Third quarter 2009 - RDA is released
Last quarter 2009-early 2010 - CoP national libraries (LC, NLC, etc.) evaluate RDA prior to implementation
Dates taken from Pam Gatenby's presentation at the RDA Satellite meeting on Aug. 8:
Over the next two years, we'll be looking at learning and implementing the content standard, RDA (Resource Description and Access). MARC21 is the current standard that describes the storage and display of data. RDA is the standard for the content. It's based on the model of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data) and the upcoming FRSAR (Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data).
Right now, the entire Cataloging department feels like we are just staying one step ahead of a looming disaster. Any minute something will happen and we will be covered over in an avalanche of books.
But we hope that given a little time and a chance to get Promptcat working, we'll be skiing on top of the avalanche instead of buried six feet under it.
Basically the switch to RDA (Resource Description and Access)pulls the rules and standards that we have been depending on out from under the cataloging department. We will try to keep everything standing while we do it but we may drop a few glasses while we are transitioning. The trickiest part of all will be putting the new tablecloth back underneath all the stuff on the table without moving any of it.