Peer-Review and The Big Bang Theory

An RDA summary

Looking for a summary of RDA? Here's an article by Ann Chapman of the Univ. of Bath. It's entitled, RDA: a cataloguing code for the 21st century.

Gordon Dunsire's presentation on RDA

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.

Key dates for RDA

• 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:

RDA not AACR2rev.

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).

Bib blog gives summary of RDA meeting

Presentation on implementing RDA

RDA online

Drafts of the RDA standard

Life in the Cataloging Department

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.

RDA

We hope the transition to RDA will be like this.



And not like this ....



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.