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Liaison to American Library Association (ALA)
Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA)
RDA Update
posted 22 January 2010
The following update is based on the RDA Update Forum and CC:DA meetings at the recent American Library Association (ALA) midwinter conference in Boston.
After several delays, "RDA: Resource Description and Access" (RDA) is expected to be released in June 2010. It will be published as part of the RDA Toolkit. The Toolkit will contain the text of RDA, sample workflows, mappings, resources from individual constituencies, the text of AACR2, and other resources.
The workflows will be designed to help catalogers navigate through RDA and assist in choosing which rules to apply. The "simple book" workflow has already been created by the Library of Congress (LC). The work by the RDA testers is likely to generate other workflows, all of which can be universally shared by all subscribers. These workflows can be edited by each institution to include local policies and procedures. It is also expected that some constituencies will produce workflows specific for certain materials, for example an exhibition catalog workflow produced by ARLIS/NA.
The mappings will contain numerous choices: RDA to MARC21, AACR2 to RDA, etc. The text of AACR2 will be embedded with links to RDA. Users familiar with AACR2 will be able to look up the AACR2 rule by number and link to the proper RDA instruction. The interface is similar to using AACR2 online via Cataloger's Desktop.
The MARBI committee has been working to create several new MARC fields to accommodate RDA rules. These new fields can be seen on the MARC21 web pages at LC for authority data and for bibliographic data; new fields are displayed in red.
ALA Publishing finally issued information on the cost. RDA Toolkit will only be issued as an online product. Below I've transcribed the price schedule from a notice distributed at the Update Forum.
Base price: Annual licensing fee for one user at a time, unlimited number of total users, $325
Additional concurrent users: Annual licensing fee for 2 or more concurrent users,
2-9 concurrent users, $55 per additional user
10-19 concurrent users, $50 per additional user
20+ concurrent users, $45 per additional user
Example: 5 total users, but only 3 concurrent users = $435
($325 base price + 2x $55)
Each institution will need to have an administrator for local access to the product.
There will be a short period of free access to the RDA Toolkit beginning with the publication in June through August 31st. ALA Publishing is planning a webinar in February to demonstrate the product. The address to sign up for news on RDA is rdatoolkit@ala.org There is the RDA-L list and a new RDA group through ALA Connect which is open to non-ALA members as well.
Despite numerous requests to ALA Publishing over a period of several years, RDA will not be available as a print product. Individual chapters can be printed out as a PDF file from the online version.
ALA Publishing is currently working with the Library of Congress Distribution Service to include the RDA Toolkit in Cataloger's Desktop. However it will still require a separate license from ALA Publishing. It will not be free with a subscription to Cataloger's Desktop. This is similar to the use of Classification Web. The link in Cataloger's Desktop works only if your institution has a license to that product.
Testing will begin with the June 2010 publication. The national libraries (Library of Congress, National Agricultural Library, and National Library of Medicine) are coordinating the testing. There are 24 participating institutions, including three active ARLIS/NA sites, the Morgan Library and Museum, the Clark Art Institute, and the Minnesota Historical Society. Institutions will catalog in their local ILS or in Connexion. OCLC is also one of the testing sites. The approved MARC21 changes are expected to be installed in May.
The testing period will last nine months and be composed of three sections:
1. June 2010-September 30th, getting used to the new interface/learning curve
2. October 1st-December 31st, cataloging of test materials
3. January 1st-March 31st, formal evaluation by the national libraries.
There will be 25 titles that all sites will catalog, including 10 monographs, 5 serials, 5 integrating resources, and 5 audiovisual. Each title in the common set will be cataloged by each institution using both AACR2 (or whatever descriptive code is in local use, e.g. DACS, CCO, DCRM-B) and RDA, but with different catalogers applying the separate rules. Testers can use any data format, e.g. MARC21, MODS, Dublin Core. Once the 25 titles are cataloged, institutions will be expected to catalog a minimum of 25 other materials within their regular workflow. For regular set items (those items chosen by each participating test institution), only RDA records are to be created. Those who create authority records as part of their workflow should also create authority records when cataloging the regular set items. Catalogers will be asked to submit a survey response for each record completed, to help assess the difficulty of applying the new rules, workflow issues, etc. LC will serve as the host for the records; and it was promised that these records will be publicly accessible.
Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments.
Elizabeth Lilker
ARLIS/NA Liaison to CC:DA
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