Sarah,
Another reason for adopting RDA: new catalogers coming out of library
schools will very likely be taught RDA and not AACR2 once RDA becomes the
de facto national standard. Eventually expertise in AACR2 will die out,
just as expertise in AACR1 has. There are plenty of pre-AACR2 records out
there, but could anyone create a new record now using those rules without
carefully studying them?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Adam L. Schiff
Principal Cataloger
University of Washington Libraries
Box 352900
Seattle, WA 98195-2900
(206) 543-8409
(206) 685-8782 fax
asch...@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/~aschiff
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Simpson, Sarah wrote:
I have only a general knowledge of RDA and have been following the discussion
the best I can, but without
understanding a lot of the more technical side of things. My administrators
know almost nothing about RDA, except
that they are proposed new cataloging rules. I am trying to come up with
something for them to see to help them
think about the decision we?ll need to make about RDA. Here is my first
effort, and I suspect it is na?ve beyond
words. Any help in doing better, while keeping it simple, would be greatly
appreciated!
Reasons for adopting RDA:
? If the national libraries adopt RDA, it could become the de facto
cataloging standard, and not making the
change would mean we would need to spend a great deal more time modifying the
records we get from OCLC or other
utilities, and may make it more difficult or impossible for us to contribute
records to those utilities;
? If RDA becomes the de facto standard, vendors may shift their
cataloging to providing RDA records, and we
may incur additional charges or not be able to purchase MARC records produced
to AACR2 rules;
? One of the reasons for RDA is to make library data more web-friendly,
allowing our data to be used more
successfully in 3rd party products, web services, and mashups, and this may
become desirable in the future;
? RDA is based on the FRBR principles, and if vendors do start or
continue down the road of providing
FRBR-ized catalogs (with some benefits to customers), the data will work more
successfully if it is RDA data.
Reasons for not adopting RDA (at least at this time):
? There will be a substantial cost investment in purchasing RDA (much
more expensive than AACR2, and on an
ongoing subscription basis) and a substantial cost and time investment in
providing the necessary training to
develop our cataloger?s ability to successfully use RDA;
? Vendors are not yet able to show us how they will incorporate the new
rules into our ILS, how they will work
with the new data in order to provide adequate display for new fields, or how
we will handle split headings
resulting from the new rules, or how future development will take advantage of
RDA changes;
? If the FRBR-ization of the catalog is not actually the future of the
OPAC, there is no discernible benefit
to our customers from the change to RDA;
? Because of the cost of RDA (and possibly other reasons as well), it
is possible that RDA will not be
accepted generally as the new standard, but will simply become one of many
standards used in cataloging, including
AACR2 and some newly developing open source standards based on AACR2;
? We have not identified any real need or perceived desire that will
actually be addressed by RDA, so we may
want to wait to adopt the standard until that happens.
I know, I know ? almost hate to put this in front of this group, so if the
above requires you to tell me that
everything above is wrong, please feel free to email me directly at
ssim...@tulsalibrary.org.
Thank you,
Sarah Simpson
Technical Services Manager
Tulsa City-County Library
