CC:DA Meetings at ALA Midwinter Conference San
Antonio, Texas.
January 20, 21, and 23, 2006
CC:DA consisted of
three official meetings: Friday (20th):
NOTE: Reports on CC:DA activities
can be found at the CC:DA home page CC:DA at
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/index.html
One of the real accomplishments spearheaded by
Jennifer Bowen (
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rdadraftpt1.html
One brief comment about the above: This website not only contains the Draft of
RDA part 1, but also has a document on Strategic Plan for RDA 2005-2008, a
Prospectus which lays out RDA as a whole, the Objectives and Principles, as
well as an FAQ. IMHO, well worth your
time to look at it carefully.
Jennifer Bowen asked CC:DA to group comments into Short term and Long term. Short term refers to comments that would get into RDA rules before it was published in 2008 and Long term comments that would be considered for RDA after 2008. Changes that only pertain to AACR2 fall into the Long term category. She continually expressed the fact that JSC can only handle a limited amount of revision because of publishing deadlines.
It was pretty much of a free-for-all marathon session
on RDA during these three days. I have tried to group my observations:
General:
RDA is principle based to a much greater degree than
ACR2. The goal is to give the right amount of guidance to a cataloger who is
encountering unusual situations, without getting into a heavy amount of specific
rules.
RDA is seen to still have a Western language and a print bias.
RDA is going to be our first Web based set of
cataloging rules. This is good, but on
the other hand, it made really tough sledding in reading the draft in a
physically printed out form. There
seemed to be much redundancy. In
reality, it (supposedly) will not be there in the Web form.
Is there still a need for a concise version of
RDA? Who would use it?
Should RDA be organized in a “decision tree” ? This would help in training.
ISBD:
RDA will move ISBD to an appendix. CC:DA was evenly split on whether this was a
good idea or not. Some members felt that RDA has lost the ability to relate data elements that
need to be related. My personal view on
the move to the appendix was that it didn’t matter—the Web version should be
constructed so that it was very modular with various iterations of the “RDA
database” For example, serialists would
have a RDA serials database that would consist of a RDA backbone with all
serial and ISBD information inserted.
And government document catalogers would have a GovDoc database that
would consist of a RDA backbone with, perhaps, a heavy emphasis on document
examples. (This was not discussed at the meetings).
Should some ISBD terminology, e.g., title proper,
continue to be in the rules? Some are
difficult to define in any other way.
Transcription:
In order to incorporate the needs of other
communities, e.g., Dublin Core and the Rare Book Community, how should RDA
balance transcription and accuracy? There
was a big discussion on how to transcribe inaccuracies and corrections which
appear on the piece.
RDA will only bracket information that does not appear
on the piece. What about supplied
information? Should the difference
between statements (formal) and notes be clarified in RDA?
Should all of the standard abbreviations (AACR2 Appendix B) be removed when transcribing
cataloging information?
There should be more consistency in the optional
rules.
Should the basic concept of “preferred source of
information” go away? An alternate would
be the entire resource (as is currently used with Chapter 9 materials).
Should the recording of the statement of
responsibility be made optional? The
Joint Steering Committee (JSC) is in favor of this.
The serial community feels that there is inconsistency
between “serials” and “successively issued resources” that needs to be
addressed.
Reports:
LC report from Barbara Tillett. http://www.loc.gov/ala/ala-sanantonio-update.html
Brief notes of what I
considered the most important items:
Library of Congress Rule
Interpretations (LCRIs) will cease as such, but will appear under a different
name. LC may include tagging decisions with the cataloging rule decisions.
LC has had a massive
voluntary retirement program. 212
employees retired.
LC will make the following
CDS publications available as free PDF files as of
The Descriptive Cataloging Manual Z1 has been updated to include guidelines for the use of subfield “u: (Uniform Resource Identifiers). This has also happened for Authority Data as well.
Report of the Task Force on Rules for Technical Description of Digital Media. The TF will go through their Sept. 2005 report appendix and compare it with RDA. The AACR2 rules will not carry over into RDA.
Report of the Task Force to Maintain the CC:DA Publication “Differences Between, Changes Within” Should this be publishing since AACR2 is shortly to be ended? ALCTS may consider a PDF-only version this document with the pending termination of AACR2. .
Task Force to Revise Guidelines for Cataloging
Microform Sets. This was my TF. We expanded the document to include
electronic sets as well.
Report of the Task Force to Review the Draft Functional Requirement for Authority Records. (FRAR) . They have completed their work;