Hi All,

Janess, Charlotte and I have been thinking about what might be helpful for people in dealing with RDA right now – with more records becoming available and while we’re still in a pre-implementation period.

 

Here are some thoughts that we hope might be useful

 

1.     Looking at RDA records so that we gain some idea of their content and some of the differences between RDA and AACR2.

 

The recent CatSIG RDA seminar included an activity looking at records. This is available on the DescribeNZ wiki at http://nznuc-cataloguing.pbworks.com/w/file/59465135/Identifying%20RDA%20Records%20Activity%201.PPT

 

It is also possible to look for RDA records in the NUC, the New Zealand Libraries Catalogue and the National Library’s own catalogue, by searching on the keyword “rdacarrier”

 

2.  Assessing how RDA records function in our catalogues at the moment.

 

Some libraries will already have quite a few RDA records in their catalogues and it would be useful share experiences of

a)     any reactions to the records from other staff and users 

b)     how the records display in your OPAC and how the new fields are (or aren’t) indexed

c)     anything about these records that you are having to change at the moment so that they work in your system

d)     anything about these records that you have questions about and are wondering how or whether to edit. 

 

National Library of New Zealand has about 100 RDA records in our catalogue at the moment. Our answers to the above questions are as follows:

 

a)  With so few records it’s no surprise that we have had no comments from other staff about any changes (with the exception of one former cataloguer who noticed some differences in record content).

 

b) At present our Voyager OPAC doesn’t display the 336-338 fields (the content type, media type and carrier type fields) but these fields are indexed in the general keyword index.

The new MARC 264 field covering publication/ distribution, copyright, etc.  also doesn’t display in the OPAC.  We will look at getting this changed.

Relationship designators (e.g. author, illustrator, librettist) display in the OPAC and are indexed in the general keyword index. 

 

c) With so few records coming in at this stage, we have done virtually no editing. The one change we made to a record was to get the copyright symbol to display correctly.

 

d) We haven’t had any RDA records come in that seemed to need lots of changes yet, although we realise that we will need to look at CiP records at some stage.

 

I’m hoping the comments that come in for c) and d) will help us develop some kind of cheatsheet or set of guidelines to deal with RDA records in this transition period.

 

If there are libraries that have already developed something of this sort, or found someone else’s guidelines that you are following, it would be great if you were willing to share this with the rest of us.

 

Have a good weekend

 

Chris

 

Chris (Christine) Todd

Team Leader, Cataloguing Team 1

National Library of New Zealand

The Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua

Direct Dial: +64 4 474 3093

email: chris.rae.todd@dia.govt.nz

 

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