The new revised RDA draft of chapter 7 [PDF], Related Resources, provides guidelines for recording how resources are related. The chapter is structured using Barbara Tillett's taxonomy of bibliographic relationships and FRBR group 1 entities: work, expression, manifestation, and item. Relationships are recorded in 4 ways:
- Resource identifiers
- Naming (using controlled access points)
- Describing using a structured description (What we use to call a "formal contents note.")
- Describing using an unstructured, informal description (What we use to call an "informal contents note" or a bibliographic history note, etc.)
This is a very important chapter and a necessary development for RDA. The only problem is the chapter rules are written in a confusing, convoluted style which make them sound more complicated than they really are. It gets away from one of the early goal for RDA: simplify the rules. While this chapter does apply FRBR concepts, I'm afraid they add a layer of complexity that catalogers and metadata librarians will get bogged down in. I had the same problem with the revised RDA draft of chapter 3. I think the last 3 revised RDA drafts, chapters 3, 6, and 7, are more complex than they need to be. I'm not saying that cataloging is not complex and intellectually demanding, it is. I just think the rules could be written in a simpler, more straightforward style and still present the same information.
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