I was very fortunate to be able to attend the American Library Association’s annual conference in New Orleans this June. RDA featured prominently in the programme, to such an extent that I was unable to attend all the RDA-related sessions because of clashes. I did attend a two-day pre-conference workshop on the application of RDA to a range of library resources. This was a real dive into the detail of RDA as it can be applied using the MARC21 format in our current library systems. The conference proper included an RDA update forum where the US national libraries’ decision to postpone implementation of RDA until at least 2013 was explained and discussed. 

Another noteworthy topic at the conference was linked data. I counted 10 sessions that included mention of linked data and some delegates were calling this “the linked data ALA”. Programme clashes limited the number of sessions I was able to attend, but I have followed up some of the presentations in my conference report. We are very fortunate that one of the key speakers on linked data at ALA, Karen Coyle, is a keynote speaker at this year’s LIANZA conference.

My third area of interest was subject access and I attended a number of presentations that were part of a two-day meeting of the Subject Analysis  Committee of the ALCTS (Association for Library Collections & Technical Services). My main interest here was to find out more about the new genre/form headings being developed by the Library of Congress. The specific areas of interest for the National Library are headings for literature and music. 

A fuller report on the conference is available on the DescribeNZ wiki http://nznuc-cataloguing.pbworks.com/

 

Regards

Chris

 

Chris (Christine) Todd

Team Leader, Cataloguing Team 1

National Library of New Zealand

The Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua

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