Resource Description and Access is the new cataloguing code due to be published next year. The development process has generated (sometimes heated) discussion. It’s designed as an online resource. So, asks Ann Chapman, is it the tool we need?
Since its publication in 1978, the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) has been extensively used world-wide to create millions of bibliographic records. But, in the last decade, new resources and publication practices in the digital age have required many changes to parts of AACR2, making it ever more complex. International consultation and consensus are key features of its revision process. Reaction to early drafts of ‘AACR3’ identified fundamental problems with the structure and evidence that the code needed a critical rethink rather than a new edition; it was not enough to shoehorn new thinking into an existing code.
A new cataloguing landscape
AACR2’s basis, on common practice and consistency, has worked well, but new conceptual models such as Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements of Authority Data (FRAD) and the International Cataloguing Principles developed by IFLA’s International Meetings of Experts challenge us to think about resources in a different way.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet exists as play-scripts (full, abridged or edited), translations, and audio, film and video recordings. There are re-workings for opera, ballet and musical theatre as well as musical works inspired by the text. Then there are versions of the Italian tale that inspired Shakespeare – Arthur Brooke’s 1562 verse translation, and William Painter’s 1582 prose translation. Finally, creators of these resources have created other works, while performers appear in other films or broadcasts. And, at some point, any or all of this information may be of relevance to a user.
Other issues also needed to be addressed. AACR2 focused on the specific title, with little support for collocation and relationships, except in certain areas such as editions, multi-volume works and title changes in serials. There was no clear relationship with cataloguing formats such as Marc 21, and AACR2 was not used by the digital community.
AACR2 mixed content and carrier data, where, increasingly, separation was needed to enable additional catalogue functionality. There is now a plethora of information carriers and some of the earlier ‘new’ formats have themselves been replaced – vinyl, audio cassette, CD, MPEG3 files. And nowadays resources may not even be physically located in the library – e.g. e-books and journals and downloadable files – while regularly updated websites are today’s equivalent of the loose-leaf resource.
With the decision to develop a new code, the following features were defined for RDA:
- rules that are easy to use and apply, designed for an online, networked environment
- effective bibliographic control for all types of media
- a logical structure based on internationally agreed principles (e.g. FRBR)
- compatible with other standards, and of use beyond the library community.
Focus on content
RDA is a content standard – a set of guidelines for describing a resource. It sets out what information needs to be recorded and in what level of detail in order to support the catalogue user in finding, identifying, selecting and obtaining a resource, enabling them to make informed choices. It also sets out the information needed about relationships: relationships between related resources, and relationships between resources and people or bodies that contributed to their creation.
RDA is not a display standard; it does not specify how information should be presented to the user. Indeed, records created under RDA can be displayed using various display conventions for a range of metadata communities, and RDA Appendixes will demonstrate how data appears in different conventions.
Neither is RDA a metadata schema; however a description created according to RDA can be encoded in a metadata schema such as Marc format or Dublin Core metadata. Metadata schemas are often not based on content standards; if they were to share a common content standard, there would be potential improvements in cross-searching different repositories and databases.
What’s new?
RDA is based on the FRBR model, so instructions use FRBR terminology: works, expressions, manifestations and items, and the entities of person, family, corporate body and place. The terms ‘preferred’ and ‘variant’ are used, often in relation to access point, title and name. A ‘variant’ access point is AACR2’s added entry or reference; a ‘preferred’ name access point is the authorised form of a name.
Where possible, Anglo-American bias in instructions has been eliminated, and RDA mandates the use of the language and script preferred by the agency creating the record. Abbreviations are replaced by spelt-out words or phrases that may also be more accurate: ‘s.l.’ is replaced by statements such as ‘place not recorded’ or ‘place not known’.
There is more emphasis on information taken from the first item received, statements of responsibility are no longer restricted by the ‘rule of three’, and there is support for more frequent entry under compiler. Treaties are entered under first named party, while treatment of parts of the Bible removes the intervening layer of old and new testaments in sub-headings for the Bible (i.e. Bible. Genesis not Bible. OT. Genesis).
Drawing on the RDA/Onix Framework for Resource Categorization 1 and the GMD/SMD Working Group 2 reports, instructions on content and carrier information have been separated and restructured. Content is the intellectual and cultural information contained in the resource in the form of text, still and moving images, cartography, notations (music, movement), sounds, and tactile forms, etc. Carriers are the means by which we preserve and access the content. Unmediated carriers can be accessed directly by people – sheet, card, volume and object. Other carriers are grouped according to the type of mediation equipment required, for example projected media (films, filmstrips), computer/digital media (CD, DVD, computer files).
Helping the user
RDA will support more flexible catalogues and more focused record display. Record sets can be clustered into plays Shakespeare wrote, performances of those plays, translations, tactile and large-print versions, etc. Results sets for a prolific person could be grouped either into resources they authored, co-authored, edited, contributed, translated or illustrated, or by the types of work they created – plays, novels, poetry, non-fiction. Clearly distinguishing content from carrier supports searching by format and filtering results sets. A visually-impaired person could limit results to large print or spoken word, while someone with access only to an audio cassette player could filter out CDs and vinyl records.
Enabling clustering and filtering could provide clearer displays and easier navigation through large results sets to find the ‘right’ record more quickly. Catalogues can become more multinational. They can also be independent of technical metadata formats; RDA is designed for the digital environment. However, while RDA provides the building blocks for new-generation Opacs, we will need system designers and vendors to develop them.
Supporting the cataloguers
RDA places more emphasis on cataloguer judgment and is structured to lead the cataloguer through a logical decision process, making it easier to use and to teach. Bibliographic elements are related to FRBR user tasks; information is included when needed for specific tasks, and instructions are grouped by bibliographic element instead of by format. Guidelines are generalised wherever possible to apply to a range of resources, although some specialised instructions are included, and RDA has been designed with future extension in mind.
RDA is generally compatible with AACR2. Many of the instructions in RDA are not different in essence to those in AACR2, but are grouped and presented differently. Guidelines relating to form and choice of access point are unlikely to be very different to those in AACR2, though those access points may include more information than previously – such as the role of a contributor to a resource, or the status of the access point information (e.g. authorised or provisional).
The British Library, Library & Archives Canada, the Library of Congress and the National Library of Australia have agreed to co-ordinate implementation of RDA; this co-ordination will cover training, production of related documents, and national decisions on implementation.
The RDA/Onix Framework for Resource Categorization will also facilitate better interoperability for library and publisher metadata. RDA will be embedded in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, with RDA controlled vocabularies as namespaces, an RDA metadata element set and an application profile.
Although RDA has the potential to be used by a number of metadata communities, the most obvious one is the Marc 21 format, and the RDA/Marc 21 Working Group created an initial mapping report 3 in November 2006.
What will it be?
RDA has been designed as an online resource, which is why it is hard to read in the linear, static text of the drafts. In its online incarnation, cataloguers will be able to move via hypertext links to the next instruction in a logical sequence, to a related instruction, or from a word in the text to the glossary for a definition. Sections 1 to 4 deal with recording attribute information, while sections 5 to 10 focus on recording relationship information. There are also 12 appendixes, a glossary and an index.
RDA is designed to interface and integrate with library management system cataloguing modules. If integrated into work flows, it can give step-by-step and contextual access to content rules. There is the potential for ‘MyRDA’ to be developed by adding local examples and omitting unused sections and options. As with better Opacs, much of this depends on system designers and vendors.
What impact will RDA have on existing catalogues?
While RDA offers real opportunities to develop better catalogues, millions of records created under AACR2 will still exist in library Opacs developed in the pre-RDA period. So what will be the impact on your library catalogue?
Initially it is anticipated significant changes to existing records will not be required since it seems that most RDA elements can be incorporated into Marc 21. However, resulting from the separation of content and carrier, new data elements will be required in Marc 21 to replace the General Material Designator (GMD), for example. Depending on when proposals are submitted, such new fields might be available for use at the end of 2009. Systems with a global edit function might, in many cases, be able to map a GMD to a value in the new field. But having the fields available is only half of the solution – the system must be designed to utilise them in search and display processes.
It is likely that the need for retrospective adjustments when integrating RDA and AACR2 records will be minimal. The need for changes is most likely where the rules on access point creation have changed, for example the omission of the ‘old and new testament’ level in access points for the Bible. Depending on systems, it may be that this sort of change can be relatively easily managed by a global edit of an authority record.
More difficult to predict is a timescale for system changes. Although system suppliers have been kept informed during the development process, they will need the final text before they embark on changes to systems. Inevitably there will be a period when extra information is in the records (content and carrier data, contributor roles, etc) but the system cannot use it for better display and filtering. Whether any extra functionality can be enabled easily (e.g. which fields are displayed in brief and full records, or some form of filtering) in your existing system is something that needs to be discussed with the system supplier.
It is also difficult to predict costs. System suppliers might choose to time incorporation of the new functionality in future upgrades, thereby amortising the cost of these changes. If you are about to replace or upgrade your system in the next few years, you should be thinking about what you want from your next catalogue and discussing with potential suppliers their plans regarding system changes resulting from RDA.
When will we see it?
Public release of the online product is scheduled for early 2009. At this year’s IFLA conference in Quebec City, Canada, a satellite meeting 4 on RDA on 8 August included a demonstration of RDA Online. Other digital versions could be developed: a concise text, tailored texts for specialist areas (e.g. law, rare books, art works) or a training resource. A survey was carried out in late 2007 to assess the potential market for a loose-leaf print version(s).
Who’s been working on it?
The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) has overall responsibility for deciding on the content of RDA under the editorship of Tom Delsey, while publication of the resource is the responsibility of the publishers, the Committee of Principals. The JSC is made up of representatives of the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, the American Library Association, the British Library, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, CILIP and the Library of Congress. The UK has two JSC representatives, one nominated by the BL and one by CILIP, who draw on the expertise and knowledge of the CILIP/BL Committee on RDA. Some of the work is undertaken by task-focused working groups (such as those on GMD/SMD, and Examples) and cross-domain initiatives (such as the Onix/RDA Initiative). J
References and notes
1 RDA/Onix Framework for Resource Categorization. Version 1.0, August 2006 (www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/docs/5chair10.pdf).
2 GMD/SMD Working Group. A short-term working group set up by JSC to review the use of general material designation and specific material designation in catalogue records. Reports: www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5chair6-chairfolup.pdf
3 RDA/Marc 21 Working Group report (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/jsc/docs/5chair12.pdf).
4 IFLA 2008 Satellite Meeting on RDA (www.ifla.org/III/announce/s13-satellite2008.htm).
Ann Chapman (a.d.chapman@ukoln.ac.uk) is Research Officer (Community and Outreach Team), Ukoln, University of Bath.
Updated: 15 August 2008