Making the Move to RDA: A Self-Study Primer for Catalogers

Making the Move to RDA: A Self-Study Primer for Catalogers is aimed at catalogers working in the MARC environment who currently create records using AACR2 and need to transition to using the new standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA). Since both RDA’s structure and content differ from AACR2 in many respects, this primer details the development and rationale for RDA as well as its intended goals, principles, and objectives. It then explains RDA’s theoretical underpinnings―collectively known as the FRBR Family of Models.

Framing the text along these lines provides readers the context for understanding the similarities and differences between AACR2 and RDA, both in terms of content and structure. With this foundation in place, the book takes the reader on a survey of RDA elements used to describe bibliographic and authority records and demonstrates how the MARC code has been expanded to accommodate new elements. Finally, it leads the reader field-by-field through MARC bibliographic records for book and non-book resources as well as through authority records for works, expressions, persons, families, and corporate bodies, describing the similarities and differences between AACR2 and RDA for each field.

Examples are provided throughout the text to help the reader visualize the concepts presented.

Chamya Pompey Kincy was a librarian at UCLA until her untimely passing in 2013. She worked in the UCLA Library for 16 years, first as a student assistant, then as a library assistant, and finally as a librarian, serving most recently as the Life and Social Sciences Cataloger in the Cataloging & Metadata Center. She was active in several professional organizations, including the Medical Library Association (MLA), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). In the Medical Library Association, she chaired the Technical Services Section and was MLA’s liaison to ALA’s cataloging rule-making body Cataloging Committee: Description and Access. In the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, she served as co-chair of the Standing Committee on Training. She was active in local, regional, and national efforts to prepare catalogers for implementation of the cataloging rules Resource Description and Access (RDA), teaching workshops all over the country.

Sara Shatford Layne was a librarian at UCLA until her retirement in 2013. She worked as a librarian at UCLA for almost 30 years, serving most recently as Principal Cataloger in the Cataloging & Metadata Center. She has been active in the American Library Association, at one point chairing the Cataloging & Classification Section of ALCTS. She has published in several areas, but primarily in the area of access to images, and co-authored Improving Online Public Access Catalogs with Martha Yee (1998). She currently serves on the editorial board of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly.