Monday Morning Blog

I finally decided to stop getting the Auto-Cat Listserv for the time being and went to the digest version of the OCLC listserv.  Wow!  This is so much better.  I got the OCLC digest this morning and all of the complaining and carrying on is essentially filtered out.  What I would like to pass along is a little bit of clarity about Day One for RDA from OCLC.  This is a direct quote from the head of the Metadta Services Department and chair of the Program for Cooperative Cataloguing (PCC), Linda Barnhard bout what Day One "means": This means that for authority records: ·Saturday, March 30, 2013 is the last day that new AACR2 authority records will be permitted in the LC/NACO Authority File. ·Beginning Sunday, March 31, 2013, all new authority records entering the LC/NACO Authority File must be coded RDA. This means that for bibliographic records: ·Beginning Sunday, March 31, 2013, all access points on bibliographic records coded "pcc" must...

There's been so much buzz on the listservs for the last two to three weeks that it has been hard for me to keep up with it all and for me to find something that might be useful to share with everyone. So, why don't I talk a bit about what the buzz has all been about?  It seems that the announcement of day one for the implementation of RDA as March 13th 2013 has started a lot of controversy.  It is almost as though people thought that RDA would go away and it doesn't appear to be.  Now there is a lot of "freaking out".  I haven't been able to read all of what people have written on the issue.  In fact, I think that I might have read about a 10th of it but I feel that it's enough for me to understand what all the buzz is about.  Here is my summary: 1)  A lot of people don't like RDA for a variety of reasons and don't want to have to learn or use it. 2)  There seems to be a lot of confusion about what RDA implementation mean...

So as libraries move toward RDA implementation, there seems to be a lot of talk about the AACR2/MARC records in our catalogues already.  What do we do with them?  When do we leave them alone and when do we convert them to RDA.  One of the interesting words that I often hear people use to refer to our existing metadata is "legacy".  Those old AACR2/MARC records are our "legacy" metadata.  It's an interesting term.  It makes it sound like the existing records in our catalogues are the "inheritance" that the next generation of library workers will receive from the cataloguing community.  I like the term.  Rather than saying that MARC and AACR2-based records are bad and need to be replaced, it makes it sound like they are something of value to be passed down through time.  Given the number of "legacy" records in existence, I suspect that even though they may be worked over and remade into new formats from time to time, the core of those...

Hi Everyone! So, how do we get ready for RDA?  Well, some of the expert trainers recommend to start out by learning about FRBR.  Here's a link to a video on the topic.  It's a few years old but hopefully it will help to get you thinking about what FRBR is and why it is useful in libraries. http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=4554 If you can't watch the video, try this Slide show (there are notes at the botton of the screen if you view the slide show in "normal" mode).  http://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/RDA%20training%20materials/FRBR%20Overview%20and%20Application_Module%201_CLW.ppt This is also a newer presentation.

The Library of Congress announced a couple of days ago that Day One for the implementation of RDA will be March 31, 2013.  Their press release says that they expect that Library and Archives Canada will also, hopefully, have the same target date. If you want to read more about the plan that LC has for training the remainder of their cataloguers, the information is available in this document:  http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/pdf/RDA_Long-Range_Training_Plan.pdf