Kia ora,

We're coming up quickly to the November RDA Steering Committee (RSC) meeting and we have a number of papers for discussion on the agenda. More information about RDA as a standard and about the RSC's role can be found here: https://www.rdatoolkit.org/rsc. Oceania is represented on the RSC through ORDAC (Oceania region RDA Committee) and currently by me as the ORDAC representative to the RSC.

The RDA Steering Committee (RSC) is responsible for maintaining RDA: Resource Description and Access. RDA is a package of data elements, guidelines, and instructions for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focussed linked data applications. RDA is published by:

www.rdatoolkit.org

As always, it would be great to get any feedback that is relevant to descriptive specialists in our region; these are the opportunities to contribute to RDA to make sure it really is an international standard and not just dictated to us by the needs and desires of others.

Proposals

We have three proposals to consider, including a minor revision to ORDAC's own paper on dual-language names. All of these are fairly straightforward, but if you have any comment on any or all of them I would be very happy to hear it:

RSC/ORDAC/2024/1/rev - Proposal on dual-language naming of Corporate Body and Place
This is simply a minor revision of wording and placement of options from previous version which was circulated at the beginning of the year. It has taken time to help people in other regions understand why this is important to us, but we have made significant progress and expect to vote on this at the coming meeting.
RSC/ExamplesEditor/2024/1 - Proposal to add glossary definitions for fictitious entity and non-human entity
While the terms are explained in the RDA guidance, they also appear as terms on various element pages and the Examples Editor has recommended that the definitions be added to the glossary for easier reference.
RSC/TechWG/2024/2/rev - Proposal to revise definitions of aggregate, aggregating work and aggregates guidance

This paper proposes some rearrangement of the aggregates guidance page and clarification in the definitions of two aggregate model terms. It is somewhat dense reading, but the changes overall are fairly minor and are intended to make the concepts easier to understand rather than making substantive changes to any of the concepts.

Discussion papers

There is also a discussion paper for consideration. Discussion papers allow communities to give feedback on future changes before they reach the point of being defined proposals. Issues raised in discussion papers are at the high level, and will include recommendations but there may be significant change between a discussion paper and the eventual proposal, dependent on the feedback received. Accepting a recommendation in a discussion paper does not result in a new element being available after the next release, there will always be a proposal document first.

In the case of RSC/ExtentWG/2024/1/rev2 there has been a long history of work in relation to statements of extent. During the 3R project to move from Original RDA to Official RDA, the pages relating to extent were flagged as a problem and the Extent Working Group have now been working on this for several years before providing us with the current proposal.

The discussion paper is very dense and quite long at 40 pages, so requires some focus to engage with. Nevertheless, it is important that we make the time to consider whether the direction of the suggested changes will meet our needs. It's easier to raise concerns about the general shape of the changes at this point than later on at the proposal stage.

To help when you are engaging with this discussion paper, ORDAC offers the following comments for consideration:

· what matters is the proposed RDA structure; the ISBDM references are there for comparison as another standard based on IFLA LRM but are not actually part of RDA;

· not all of the suggested new elements will be useful to all descriptive agencies, but RDA is attempting to be relevant to a wide audience across the GLAM sector - this means that some of the elements being discussed may be completely irrelevant to the descriptions you currently make, while others will be a better fit, and that's okay;

· extent is about more than just how many pages there are in a book, it's about measurements, so things you may not have expected are part of this paper (e.g. dimensions, image resolution, number of sound channels, etc.);

· the element Manifestation: extent of manifestation would be converted to a superelement under the changes suggested in this discussion paper which means that you can compile the values of the subelements to make a single statement. This matches what we currently do in a lot of cases, putting multiple values together as a single statement (e.g. 369 pages, 16 pages of plates) and is equivalent to what happens with other elements such as Manifestation: publication statement where we can choose to compile the subelements together into a single statement (e.g. London : Penguin, 2024). This is not what everyone will always want to do (it is possible to want to keep place entirely separate from name of publisher) but it allows that combination to be put together. It is important when reading the discussion paper to recognise that most of the elements being discussed are not new superelements;

· the discussion paper makes some very specific changes to the use of the term 'leaf' and terms related to that which come up several times but are consolidated in the section "Vocabulary terms related to sheets and leaves" (section 13.2, pages 31-36);

ORDAC is still considering our own response to this discussion paper, but it would be fair to say that on the whole we are in favour of the direction suggested by the Extent Working Group, with the main exception being the section on the suggested new element Manifestation: manifestation numbering of extent statement (section 7, pages 26-29). While this element may be a good addition to the RDA structure, much of the discussion around it seems to be technically incorrect and this makes it difficult to be sure how it is actually going to be used. It is my personal view that where they are talking about adding a "transcription guideline" what they actually mean is to add a "string encoding scheme". Transcription guidelines assist us in formatting text, such as dealing with capitalisation, diacritical marks, punctuation and symbols, while string encoding schemes tell us how to combine values together to form a single value including adding or removing punctuation. String encoding schemes are also considered to belong to descriptive communities rather than being part of the RDA instructions themselves; this currently happens with the legacy instructions on how to arrange a value for authorised access points (e.g. converting Sidney Mead as seen on a title page to Mead, Sidney E. (Sidney Earl), 1904-1999 as an access point, including the punctuation changes and order of additions).

There may be other issues that we discover as well, or you may find other problems or concerns as you work through this discussion paper - please do raise them as all commentary is useful.

Please send all feedback on the above papers to me at charlotte@rdatoolkit.org by end of working day Friday 20 September so I can incorporate it into the ORDAC formal response for the RSC meeting.

Any feedback you think of after this date is still very much welcomed, but will likely not make it into the formal written response.

Also, please forward this on to any other interested parties or lists.

ngā mihi,

Charlotte Christensen, RLIANZA MLIS

Oceania Representative to the RDA Steering Committee