ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 76 | August 2005
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From AACR to RDA The two international committees who oversee the development of the Anglo–American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) met in Chicago from 24–28 April 2005 to discuss the best way to proceed with the development of a new cataloguing code to replace AACR2, the current edition of this widely-used standard for library cataloguing. Deirdre Kiorgaard from the National Library represented the Australian Committee on Cataloguing (ACOC), and Ebe Kartus, Chair of ACOC, was also present to put forward the Australian point of view. The Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR (JSC) and the Committee of Principals for AACR (CoP) have taken on board recent feedback from library constituencies and other rule-making bodies that a new approach is required. To signify the change in direction, the JSC and CoP have agreed on a new working title for the code—RDA: Resource Description and Access. RDA will be the new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world. RDA will provide:
Designed as an online product for use in a Web environment, RDA will have the following features.
Australian cataloguers are formally represented on the JSC through ACOC, and Australian librarians can have input to the development of RDA through any of the members of ACOC. The JSC and CoP also recognise that major stakeholders in the development of RDA include librarianship educators, library administrators, system developers, metadata communities, MARC format developers and international cataloguing programs. As RDA is developed, drafts of each section of the new standard will also be made available for these major stakeholders to review, and the developers of RDA will actively seek feedback from all of these groups. The publication of RDA is now planned for 2008. A more complete report of the meetings of the Joint Steering Committee is available at: <http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/0504out.html>. The contact details for ACOC members are available from the ACOC website: <www.nla.gov.au/lis/stndrds/grps/acoc/members.html>. —DEIRDRE KIORGAARD, Director, Digital Collections Branch, dkiorgaa@nla.gov.au |
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