Resource Description and Access (RDA)
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IntroductionSee also Digital Libraries Glossary | Dublin Core | Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS) | Web 3.0 Resource Description and Access (RDA) is the new code for cataloguing and bibliographic description for libraries, archives, museums and related information organizations. RDA is not completely new but is built on AACR2. However, RDA is a new set of guidelines about description and access, and covers all kinds of media in the digital era. RDA was developed and led by the Joint Steering Committee (JSC). The Library of Congress has stated publicly that it will start to use RDA in 2013. The creation of RDA was overseen by the Committee of Principals representing the American Library Association, Canadian Library Association, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, British Library, and National Library of Australia. Various reports
The benefits of RDA For those library professionals who describe information resources, the future challenge is to create metadata that will meet the needs of users while also making it possible to search and display content on library OPACs. To assist in these important functions, RDA is one building block in creating better catalogues and resource discovery systems. The shift to RDA requires a fundamental re-thinking of the way that we catalogue and describe information and provide access to it. The benefits of RDA include:
The emerging digital age requires libraries to respond to the new structure and flow of information. Subject cataloguers, indexers and information specialists are now required to describe many types of information resources that are made available in library collections but the relationships that can be drawn to connect resources require new descriptive approaches. The primary goal of RDA is to facilitate resource discovery within catalogues in a more consistent and powerful way that started with the various cataloguing standards many decades ago. In this new environment, traditional cataloguing processes need to be put into a broader context of folksonomic and social cataloguing and tagging -- which is an additional challenge. 2010 - 2013RDA was released in 2010, and its implementation is ongoing through 2013. RDA emerged from the International Conference on the Principles & Future Development of AACR2 in 1997. Substantial revisions to AACR2 were needed at that time, and a new code was recommended as a third edition of AACR. RDA departs from AACR in its reliance on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). FRBR identifies the 'user tasks' that library catalogues make available and hierarchical relationships with bibliographic data. Descriptions produced using RDA are intended to be compatible with existing records created pre-RDA under AACR2. Towards the semantic webThe new cataloguing standard for libraries is a kind of first step towards the creation of the semantic web. The semantic web needs a unifying mechanism, however, such as the resource description framework to assist in the integration of traditions and practices of knowledge organization. Uniquely, RDF covers domain specific traditions and the practices of the ‘metadata movement’ through a unified view – that of resource description in the broadest semantic web sense. Tools and standards such as the resource description framework (RDA) should help to integrate the sources of metadata on the web and embedded within library catalogues. RDF should also be able to accommodate the RDA cataloguing standard in order to move subject and descriptive cataloguing to the centre of the (semantic) future web. Key websites
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