Thoughts on ALA's RDA Update Forum + New RDA Draft Available

I enjoyed reading Karen Coyle's blogging of the RDA Update Forum held yesterday at the ALA Annual Conference. Most interesting quotes:

"John Attig is the new ALA representative to the JSC. John gave the clearest vision of RDA that I've ever heard, linking RDA chapters directly to FRBR user tasks and stating clearly that RDA is intended to be a set of data elements plus a community application profile. He also talked about traditional cataloging details, like uniform titles and headings for the Bible, that are being discussed by the RDA members. His talk showed that the issues that come up in library cataloging are essentially unchanged, although the structure that records those decisions may be significantly different. One will still ponder access points, primary and not, and struggle with all of the nitty gritty details. [emphasis mine] John does an excellent job of marrying metadata and cataloging -- the data and the activity of making decisions about the data."

"However, after all of this positive reporting, the few questions that we had time for showed that there is still an undercurrent (or maybe a good-sized wave) of discontent within the cataloging community. Some of this might be seen as obsessing on the part of catalogers (the obligatory complaining about ISBD punctuation), but not all. An attendee sitting near me stood up and stated that RDA, as currently in draft, is not usable as cataloging instructions. [emphasis mine] After we broke up, others came up to him to thank him for voicing what they, too, feel. Even members of the RDA process have said similar things off record."

Here's what I take from this:

• While the structure/framework of RDA will be different from AACR2, the fundamental cataloging issues will remain. This makes sense. Certain aspects of bibliographic description and authority control are present whether or not the resources you're cataloging are digital or print.
• The current drafts of RDA aren't usable as a new content standard/cataloging code.
• The process of RDA development is moving forward nonetheless.
• So, since RDA is still in draft (and new drafts are scheduled to come out) there's still opportunity for the cataloging community to have a voice in the process. If we don't like the product let's say so!
• By the way, a new RDA draft was just released. It's for Part A, Chapters 6-7 (revised) [PDF]. The deadline for comments is September 17, 2007.