cambridge university library rda - hugh taylor, 7 jan 09 rda: past, present, future hugh taylor...

RDA - Hugh Taylor, 7 Jan 09

Cambridge University Library

RDA: Past, Present, Future

Hugh TaylorCILIP Representative, Joint Steering Committee

for Development of RDA



RDA Quick Facts

• New content standard intended to replace AACR2

• Goes further in what it covers

• Web-based product

• Full draft (as PDFs) currently out for worldwide review



RDA – the past



RDA – the background

• Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules - currently 2nd edition, 2002 revision

• Revisions the responsibility of the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC)

• Used by libraries world-wide both in English and in translation



RDA – the background

• Toronto 1997 conference on Principles and Future Development of AACR

• Some of the problems with AACR2– Designed for the card catalogue– Case-based and logically inconsistent– Class of materials arrangement is not extensible– Authority control not handled well



Goals for RDA

• A new standard for resource description and access– Designed for the digital world– Optimised for use as an online product– Description and access of all resources – All types of content and media – Resulting records usable in the digital environment– Part of the new information architecture



Goals for RDA

• A consistent, flexible, and extensible framework

• Compatible with internationally established principles, models and standards

• Primarily for use in libraries, but also adaptable across many information communities worldwide



RDA Foundations

• Support FRBR user tasks– Find, Identify, Select, Obtain

• FRAD user tasks– Find, Identify, Contextualize, Justify

• IME ICC statement• Principle of representation

– Record elements based on how resource represents itself



RDA – the present



RDA development structure

Committeeof

Principals

AACR FundTrustees/Publishers

J oint SteeringCommittee

ALACC:DA

ACOC BL CCC CILIP LC

RDA Project Manager

RDA Editor

J SC Secretary



RDA development process• Open process during development

– Editor drafts chapters for review by JSC– Editor revises chapters for public review– JSC considers comments and requests changes to

text by the Editor– Editor revises draft text– Also JSC & constituency proposals



RDA structure

• Not tied to any specific record structure• Alignment with the FRBR and FRAD models • Adaptable and extensible• Two main parts

– Attributes of the FRBR entities– Relationships between the entities



RDA, ISBD, MARC 21• AACR2 Part I was organized around ISBD areas• RDA is a content standard - not a display or

encoding standard• ISBD display (including punctuation) is in an

appendix• MARC 21 is one possible carrier for RDA data

– RDA/MARC Working Group formed to deal with changes to MARC 21

– But MARC is unlikely to be best long-term approach to encoding data (this isn’t RDA-specific…)



RDA – where are we right now?

• Full draft (as PDFs) released for public review Nov 2008• JSC will consider comments at March meeting• Expect that RDA content for first release will be finalised

by end of June• But publishers hadn’t made sufficient progress with

product development to put full draft in pre-release version

• Implementation likely in 2010



RDA – the future



Implementation• LC/NLM/NAL: Decision to implement RDA will

be based upon evaluation of its utility within the library and information environment– Period of testing and evaluation following the release

of RDA - results will be disseminated• BL, LAC, NLA will also conduct testing prior to

implementation and disseminate their results• ALA has set up an Implementation Task Force• BL has similar (and has staff member dedicated

to this)



Financial stuff

• Cost factors– Year on year costs of RDA– Lifespan costs of AACR

• Licensing and pricing– Finding the right model– An existing model in LIS marketplace?– Repay investment in RDA development

• When will we know?– More information needed from ALA Publishing



Other communities

• JSC has already been working with other metadata communities– MARC (of course)– ONIX (publishers)– Dublin Core, IEEE/LOM, Semantic Web

• DCMI/RDA Task Group was formed in 2007 and is continuing work on RDA Vocabularies – this is very important for the future use of RDA



Everything is connected

• at the community (human)…

• …and technical (Semantic Web) levels

• (And within RDA itself, there’s a strong emphasis on “relationships”)



Looking further ahead

• After publication CoP/JSC will review– Systems for content updating– Systems for product enhancement– Governance of RDA– Future business model



References• RDA website

http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rda.html

• Strategic planhttp://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/stratplan.html

• RDA Prospectushttp://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/rdaprospectus.html

• Objectives and principleshttp://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5rda-objectivesrev2.pdf

• International Cataloguing Principleshttp://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/icc/imeicc-statement_of_principles-2008.pdf

• FRBR - http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf

• FRAD - http://www.ifla.org/VII/d4/franar-conceptual-model-2ndreview.pdf

cambridge university library rda - hugh taylor, 7 jan 09 rda: past, present, future hugh taylor...

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