A new cataloging standard for today's varied resources.

• Author: Bailey, Robert
• Position: Book review

Cataloging resources is not something every records manager comes across or necessarily needs to know how to do. But I found the topic interesting, and this book renewed my thoughts about the highly developed content standards for cataloging library resources.

RDA and Cartographic Resources is about the resource description and access (RDA) unified cataloging standard, which evolved from the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2). It was designed for the digital world and the expanding universe of metadata users, is meant to be compatible with international principles, models, and standards, and potentially solves some of the fundamental problems of traditional cartography, or the practice of making maps.

The Evolution of RDA

RDA's evolution began in 1967 with the AACR, which became the AACR2 in 1978. AACR2 was revised three times, in 1998, 2002, and 2010.

RDA emerged from the International Conference on the Principles & Future Development of AACR held in Toronto in 1997. It was quickly realized that a substantial revision of AACR2 was required, which encouraged the adoption of a new title for what had been envisaged as a third edition of AACR.

It was adopted as a standard on April 1, 2013, by the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) and the British Library, but its implementation was delayed during the several months LOC catalogers needed for training.

One major difference between RDA and its predecessor is that AACR2 arranges materials by format type while RDA arranges them according to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions' "Functional Requirement for Bibliographic Records" (FRBR).

According to a book the authors cited, From AACR2 to RDA: An Evolution by Kathy Glennan, RDA provides a set of guidelines and instructions on recording data to support resource discovery and improves the instructions for non-printed resources. It separates rules for recording and presenting data elements, helps eliminate redundancy, and incorporates rules for authority control. Glennan also wrote that RDA functions best as an interactive, online tool.

Chapter Highlights

There are several informative chapters beginning with Chapter 3 "Comparing Standards," Chapter 4 "Navigating RDA to Describe Cartographic Resources Elements, and Chapter 5 "Cartographic Resources Cataloging."

The heart of the manual is Chapter 4, which compares the Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) Format for Bibliographic Data fields that describe cartographic...