Cataloging Futures

RDA Online draft delayed

The publishers of Resource Description and Access (RDA) recently announced a 2 month delay releasing the final draft of RDA in its web prototype, RDA Online.

The Co-Publishers of RDA Online (the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) have reached the conclusion that further time is required to complete the development of the new software that will be used for distributing the full draft of RDA for constituency review.

The full draft was originally scheduled for release on August 4, 2008. Instead, it will now be issued in October 2008. The three month time period allocated for comments on the full draft is unchanged, and in this new schedule will extend from October into January 2009. More specific dates for RDA's final release will be forthcoming shortly.

Note to publishers: This metadata librarian needs a paper version also (I'm sure I'm not alone in this request.).

Barbara Tillett's RDA webcasts

I always blog about "essential reading," well here's some essential watching.

Barbara Tillett, Chief of the Cataloging Policy and Support Office, Library of Congress, speaks about RDA in these two new webcasts:

Resource Description and Access: Background / Overview

RDA (Resource Description and Access), the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment, is under development. This presentation provides background on its development and a general overview of the conceptual models, international principles, and structure of this new code.

Cataloging Principles and RDA: Resource Description and Access

The second in a series on RDA: Resource Description and Access, the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment. This presentation deals with the cataloging principles that have influenced the development of RDA; the challenges they present to the international sharing of bibliographic and authority data; and the challenges they present to the developers of RDA.

JSC April meeting outcomes now available

Important reading for keeping up with the development of the new cataloging content standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA):

The Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) has just issued outcomes from their most recent meeting. The meeting was held in Chicago in April 2008.

Letter from Deanna Marcum on RDA

A letter from Deanna Marcum was just posted to the AUTOCAT list. It provides the joint statement of the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library on Resource Description and Access. Some excerpts:

The three national libraries agreed on the following approach: First, we jointly commit to further development and completion of RDA. Second, following its completion, a decision to implement the rules will be based upon the positive evaluation of RDA's utility within the library and information environment, and criteria reflecting the technical, operational, and financial implications of the new code. This will include an articulation of the business case for RDA, including benefits to libraries and end users and cost analyses for retraining staff and re-engineering cataloging processes.

Together, we will:

• Jointly develop milestones for evaluating how we will implement RDA
• Conduct tests of RDA that determine if each milestone has been reached; paying particular attention to the benefits and costs of implementation
• Widely distribute analyses of benefits and costs for review by the U.S. library community
• Consult with the vendor and bibliographic utility communities to address their concerns about RDA

Included among the tests that will be developed to assist in formulating implementation decisions:

• Usability testing with cataloging staff, i.e. librarians and technicians, experienced and newer staff from the three national libraries in consultation with representatives from the U.S. library community (including OCLC and library vendors) about its participation in the process
• Testing of records for a broad array of materials created during usability studies to determine compatibility with existing record sets and ensuring records are usable and understandable for our end users
• Testing the feasibility of integrating this new cataloging standard into all relevant technology systems

The three institutions agreed that these steps will be followed and, if there is a decision to implement RDA, that the implementation would not occur before the end of 2009.

UPDATE: Letter and joint statement [pdf] now available on the LC Working Group website.

RDA/MARC working group established

Lots of interesting cataloging news this week. I was able to glimpse it going by as I looked up from full-immersion in METS and Dublin Core (that "other planet" that the non-MARC metadata folk live on). First up, some MARC news.

Yesterday on the MARC and RDA discussion lists, Marjorie E. Bloss, RDA Project Manager, announced the establishment of the RDA/MARC Working Group:

Under the auspices of the British Library, the Library and Archives Canada, and the Library of Congress, an RDA/MARC Working Group has been established to collaborate on the development of proposals for changes to the MARC 21 formats to accommodate the encoding of RDA data. With the implementation of RDA anticipated for late 2009, the Working Group will be drafting proposals for review and discussion by the MARC community in June 2008.

Although the MARC 21 formats support the encoding of descriptions created according to a wide range of content standards, the close relationship between AACR and MARC 21 has contributed to the efficient exchange of information among libraries for decades. The RDA/MARC Working Group will identify what changes are required to MARC 21 to support compatibility with RDA and ensure effective data exchange into the future.

Members of the RDA/MARC Working Group are:

• Everett Allgood (New York University and CC:DA Liaison to MARBI)
• Corine Deliot (British Library)
• Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress)
• Bill Leonard (Library and Archives Canada)
• Sally McCallum (Library of Congress)
• Marg Stewart (JSC Liaison to the RDA/MARC Working Group)
• Martha Yee (UCLA Film and Television Archive)

Karen Coyle's RDA presentation at Code4Lib

Over on the LibLime Developers' Blog, Galen Charlton provides a nice overview of Karen Coyle's keynote presentation on RDA given at the recent Code4Lib conference. I particularly like this section of "Frequently Unanswered Questions":

Of course, a shift to RDF and a more formalized cataloging model would be a drastic change, and raises, as Karen Coyle calls them, some Frequently Unanswered Questions:

• Is FRBR the right conceptual model?
• Is RDF the right format?
• What happens to MARC?
• Who will be in charge?  How will things be decided?

There are other questions — how will library catalogs, data stores, and ILSs have to change if RDA over RDF transpires? How will the existing corpus of MARC data be migrated? How will the systems vendors, open source projects, and cataloging vendors adapt, to say nothing of catalogers, cataloging teachers, and library schools?

Barbara Tillett on RDA and FRBR

Yesterday on the FRBR discussion list, Arlene Taylor writes:

Barbara Tillett has updated the RDA section of her chapter in the book _Understanding FRBR_ that I edited. Her updated section is now available at http://lu.com/FRBR/

Due to publishing schedules, the section published in the book reflected the way RDA was shaping up prior to the October changes that now more clearly show the relationship of RDA to FRBR.

You'll want to read Tillett's short, informative overview of RDA development and its relation to the FRBR model. Here's a section on the JSC work leading up to Resource Description and Access (RDA):

A "Format Variations Working Group" was formed to look at FRBR's relationship to the new rules. Jennifer Bowen chaired this group. One member, Pat Riva from Canada, took her sabbatical to analyze where FRBR terminology might be substituted in the AACR2 rules. Among the recommendations was to use the term resource to be an overarching word to express the materials in a library's collection or things that would be part of the greater bibliographic universe. Another recommendation was to use only the FRBR terms when they accurately reflected the intention of the rule. The Working Group also recommended a structure for uniform titles that builds on the identification of the work, then the expression, then the manifestation, and finally the item, through added data elements as needed. If one needs to cite a work, then only the work elements need be included. If one needs to point to a specific item, then the full string including elements to identify the specific item are included.

Reading RDA: a few comments and questions

I've read most of the recently released RDA drafts and sent comments in for the constituent review. I'm fully behind moving forward with RDA development and I'm anxious to see the complete draft due out this summer. Here's are a few general thoughts and questions about the latest drafts, RDA, section 2-4, 9 that were issued in December 2007:

• In general, catalogers familiar with AACR2 are going to get confused deciding when something is a “work” and when something is an “expression.” Even though these terms are defined in rule 5.1.1 there is the conceptual problem of never having had to think about these entities that much before, especially expression. This will be a important area for RDA implementation.
• The new organization of RDA chops up the rules putting them into many different chapters. Again, rather than simplifying the rules this adds complexity. Consider collapsing some of the chapters, e.g., chapters 5, 6, and 7 could be collapsed. As RDA gets revised I hope complexity is checked. Let's keep it when necessary, but prefer to simplify and streamline the new code when possible.
• Does the new organization of RDA lock catalogers, et al. into one conceptual model—FRBR? Also, does the new organization locks the user of RDA into one interpretation of FRBR?
• Some of the language used in these rules is so precise and technical because of the strict application of FRBR concepts and terminology. The rules force the users to think in terms of work, expression, manifestation, and item at every turn. Does RDA have to be so closely tied to FRBR? Can the rules be more open to other conceptual models?
• More emphasis should be placed on flexibility in applying the level of detail in RDA. I don’t see enough of this type of guidance in the current drafts. Catalogers and metadata librarians should feel free to apply as much or as little of the RDA rules as they need.

Deadline for comments on new RDA drafts

I won't be able to blog much this week because I'm reading the new RDA drafts [pdf] and typing up comments. The US deadline for submitting comments is February 7th. You can find the RDA comment form and more details about submitting comments over on the CC:DA website.

ALA Midwinter 2008: RDA Update Forum

Resource Description and Access (RDA) Update Forum
January 13, 2008
Speaker: John Attig, ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA

Before I get into the forum details, here are 4 documents that are key to understanding the next steps forward to RDA implementation:

• RDA Implementation Scenarios [pdf], Tom Delsey, RDA Editor
• A New Organization for RDA
• Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)
• Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) [pdf]

(Your cataloging/metadata life will go a lot smoother if you take some time to study these documents!)

On to the RDA forum. I had the good fortune to hear John Attig speak twice about RDA because I attended the CC:DA meeting the day before. This was helpful. He discussed 4 topics:

• A new organization for RDA
• Content of the draft section currently being reviewed
• Other decisions taken at the October 2007 JSC meeting
• Next steps

I'm going to focus on the new organization and the next steps for RDA.

New organization of RDA

• The new organization of RDA is the result of JSC's stronger grasp of what it is they are trying to accomplish.
• Old organization did not fit with: the RDA objectives and principles, how they see metadata, and how they understand the FRBR/FRAD model .

RDA will be implemented within a context of the encoding, storage, and exchange of data. RDA needs to support 3 possible implementation scenarios:

• Scenario #3 is the current cataloging environment. A flat record structure with all entities described in a single, composite record.
• Scenario #2 is a single bibliographic record linked to authority records.
• Scenario #1 is separate descriptions of each entity linked by identifiers to show relationships.

Scenario #1 represents the future. Every entity will have a unique identifier. Access points and authority control may be less important in scenario #1. This was part of the reason to change the organizational structure of RDA. The old organization was tied to scenario #2.

RDA and FRBR/FRAD

RDA's new organization now has an explicit connection to FRBR and FRAD. (By the way, everyone at Midwinter who brought this up thought it was a good change.) All FRBR entities are covered. There are placeholders in the structure for the FRBR group 3 entities (concept, object, event, place) to be developed in the future. The structure of the RDA outline now has 2 main parts: attributes of the FRBR entities and relationships among the entities.

The essential handout

We were given a 6 page handout that mapped out the new RDA organization, the FRBR user tasks and entities, and the 3 implementation scenarios. I'm sure this will be posted on the RDA website soon.

Next steps

• The JSC has what seems a herculean task to complete the work of RDA before its first release.
• A complete draft is scheduled for July 2008.
• A new RDA online prototype may be available to try later this year.
• JSC is discussing with MARBI both MARC 21 implementation and developing alternatives to MARC
• RDA's first release is scheduled for early 2009 with implementation following in late 2009.

By the way, Marjorie Bloss, RDA Project Manager, opened this session, but I unfortunately missed her update. I've only scratched the surface on the content of this forum. John Attig is to be commended for doing a great job unpacking an awful lot of complex information. I expect there will be a lot more to report on RDA in the coming year.