RDA: to teach, or not to teach

When students are just getting into the basics of cataloging--Do you introduce them to AACR2 and RDA, or just AACR2?

I'm sure every teacher of cataloging is asking themselves that question. It's the topic of this post, Teaching cataloguing again, written by Louise Spiteri, director of the School of Information Management, Dalhousie University.

Comments

[Louise Spiteri]

Christine, I'm glad you've opened up this topic to cataloguing educators. I'd be very interested in hearing what people are doing, both in your blog, and also in response to my post.

[Christine Schwartz]

Hi Louise,

One of my colleagues is taking cataloging right now and, coincidentally, we were talking about this topic the other day. So, I was happy to find your post.

When I was in library school (circa 1988-89) we never learned any pre-AACR2 rules, just AACR2. So, I picked up an understanding of some of pre-AACR2 practice by just encountering the older bib. records on-the-job. It would have been nice to have an overview of the changes. But I realize it's hard to give that kind of historic perspective in a semester.

Starting off with a firm foundation in AACR2 is probably the best introduction to RDA to start with, since so much of RDA is reconstituted AACR2.

[Louise Spiteri]

I agree, Christine. In the first-level cataloguing course, I'll incorporate RDA in the advanced course, together with AACR for multimedia. I doubt I will achieve the optimal balance in this first attempt. Our school is working with the Canadian Library Association to host RDA workshops, so this is another opportunity for students to be exposed to RDA.