"The U.S. RDA Test Process" by Diane Boehr, Regina Romano Reynolds, and Tina Shrader

This article reports the content of a session given at the 2011 NASIG Conference on the process of testing Resource Description and Access (RDA) in the United States in late 2010 and the subsequent analysis of the data in 2011. The presenters represented three national libraries who were an integral part of the testing process: the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine. While this article does not present the recommendations that came out of the test (those can be found on the Library of Congress's website), it does describe the process of how the test was conducted, how the data were analyzed, and the general categories of recommendations that were arrived at. Given that this presentation was part of the NASIG conference, the topic of continuing resources in the test was highlighted. The presenters touched on issues such as successive entry, what format changes will constitute the need for a new bibliographic record, how translations and language additions will be handled, discrepancies between RDA and CONSER Standard Record practices, and the future of provider neutral records under RDA.

"The U.S. RDA Test Process" can be found in the Serials Librarian, volume 62, issues 1-4 (2012), pages 125-139. DOI: 10.1080/0361526X.2012.652485.

Serials and RDA: An Ongoing Relationship

"Serials and RDA: An Ongoing Relationship" is a report of a preconference given at the 2011 NASIG conference by Judith A. Kuhagen (Library of Congress) and recorded by Margaret Mering (University of Nebraska--Lincoln). The report gives a brief history of the origins of the  new cataloging rules, RDA: Resource Description and Access. Also covered is information on the structure of RDA, an overview of some specific rules, and a discussion of how various relationships will be handled.

"Serials and RDA" is available in a special issue of the Serials Librarian, volume 62, no. 1-4 (2012), pages 5-16. doi: 10.1080/0361526X.2012.652470

"RDA: End of the World Postponed?" by Kevin M. Randall

Kevin Randall, an RDA proponent and the Principal Serials Cataloger at Northwestern University, provides an overview of some of the major issues surrounding Resource Description and Access in his article, "RDA: End of the World Postponed?" In the article, Randall tackles questions such as:

• Why should we switch to RDA if the records aren't really much different from AACR2 records? Can't we just fix AACR2?
• What's all this about FRBR, and why are we rushing into it blindly?
• Are we putting the rules cart before the format horse?
• We finally got continuing resources, now where did they go?
• Have we abandoned ISBD?
• Isn't the U.S. RDA test really just for show? Isn't implementation a foregone conclusion?
• That was then, this is now . . . what's the future?

If you've grown weary of following all the RDA discussions on various discussion lists, this article will help catch you up on some of the current debates. As catalogers well know, cataloging rules are all too often blamed for the shortcomings of OPACs, so I want to note one particular quote that I wish all reference librarians and library administrators would read:

"... the cataloger’s work could be aided to an extreme degree by truly suitable and modern cataloging
interfaces. (For many years complaints about the difficulty and expense of cataloging have been largely misplaced. The problems have far less to do with the cataloging rules and the MARC format than they have to do with an electronic cataloging interface that after four decades still holds onto its original basic concept: read a book of cataloging rules, and apply those rules in filling out a MARC tag workform)"--P. 339.

Randall, Kevin M. "RDA: End of the World Postponed?" Serials Librarian 61, no. 3-4 (Oct. 2011): 334-345. doi:10.1080/0361526X.2011.617297


[Note: My apologies to readers and to Mr. Randall for the lateness of this posting. I had been relying on an RSS feed for information on new articles, but never received notice of this one. It wasn't until I saw a citation to the article in the NASIG Newsletter that I discovered the omission.]

27th Annual NASIG Conference

Registration is now open for the 27th annual conference of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG), which will be held June 7-10, 2012, in Nashville, Tennessee. Complete information can be found on the conference website:  http://www.nasig.org/conference_registration.cfm

Some program highlights of particular interest to serials catalogers include:

• "RDA and Serials: Theoretical and Practical Applications" to be presented by Judy Kuhagen (preconference session)
• "CONSER Serials RDA Workflow" to be presented by Les Hawkins and Hien Nguyen
• "What's Up with Docs?!?: The Peculiarities of Cataloging Federal Government Serial Publications" to be presented by Stephanie Braunstein, Joseph R. Nicholson, and Fang Huang Gao.

Preliminary Report from the CONSER Standard Record RDA Core Elements Task Group

The preliminary report from the CONSER Standard Record RDA Core Elements Task Group is now available on the CONSER website. Issues covered include:

• Authorized access points for translations and language editions
• Additions to distinguish otherwise identical authorized access points for resources
• Recording dates of publication
• Recording statements of responsibility relating to the title proper

LRTS Request for Grant Proposals

Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) announces the availability of grants of up to $1,000 (funded by an Association for Library Collections and Technical Services grant) to assist authors with preparing literature reviews. The purpose of the grants is to provide funds that will be used for clerical and research support, thereby allowing the author/s to concentrate on analyzing the resources and writing the literature review.  Possible support tasks might be collecting citations, sorting and organizing citations by themes and categories, locating and gathering resources to be reviewed, verifying citations, funding purchases of articles not owned by the home institution of the author, and so forth.  Funding also could provide a mentoring opportunity by funding assistance by a library school or information science student.

Highly cited, literature reviews provide an essential professional service to practitioners, scholars, and students by identifying the key themes and the most important publications appearing in successive two year periods.  Books and articles by accredited scholars and researchers, i.e., primarily peer-reviewed publications provide the basis for a literature review.  A good literature review is evaluative, selective, and critical, and goes beyond summarizing and quoting from the selected sources.   Literature reviews explain why the sources cited are important and valuable, may compare them to prior works, and create a structure that organizes the two-year body of content to make it comprehensible and to identify themes, not only for those who have followed the developments it describes, but to future researchers.  All sources referenced appear in the endnotes; a separate bibliography is not published.  Although commissioned, LRTS literature reviews go through the same double-blind peer review process as unsolicited manuscripts.

LRTS seeks authors for the following topical areas and coverage periods:

• Collection Development and Management literature published 2011-2012
• Cataloging/Classification/Metadata Management literature published 2011-2012
• Preservation and Reformatting literature published 2011-2012

Papers should be submitted not later than June 30, 2013. Grant recipients will be required to submit progress reports to the LRTS Editor in June and December each year.

The grant proposal must include:

1. Requester name, title, and contact information

2. The literature to be reviewed (see list above)

3. The requester’s credentials to write the literature review

4. Amount requested

5. Budget plan and rationale for how the funds will be expended

Proposals are due by January 31, 2012.

Applications and inquiries should be submitted to Peggy Johnson, LRTS Editor, lrtseditor@ala.org.  

Call for Papers: Library Resources and Technical Services

Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) is the Official Journal of the Association for Library Collections Technical Services (ALCTS)

Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) is a peer-reviewed journal that takes a critical approach to the questions and challenges facing librarians and libraries with regard to:

• Collections
• Scholarly communication
• Preservation (including digitization)
• Acquisitions (including licensing and economic aspects of acquisitions)
• Continuing resources
• Cataloging (including descriptive metadata, authority control, subject analysis, and classification) 

LRTS publishes both research papers and thoughtful explorations of operational issues that have value and implications for other libraries. In addition, LRTS publishes editorials, book reviews, letters to the editor, and the annual report of the president of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.

If you have thoughts or ideas for papers in these areas that you would like to explore or develop further, or if you would like to encourage your colleagues to develop a topic or theme (for example, from a presentation, program or poster session) and to turn the theme into a paper, please consider contributing to LRTS yourself, or invite a colleague to consider contributing.

For more information, see the LRTS web site: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/lrts/index.cfm

Instructions for authors can be found here: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/resources/lrts/authinst.cfm

If you have questions or would like additional information, you can contact the editor:

Peggy Johnson

Editor, Library Resources & Technical Services

Editor, Technicalities

voice:    651-298-0121

m-john@tc.umn.edu