Kia ora Amanda,
First, apologies for the length of time it’s taken to reply. Charlotte and I have both taken some leave over the last week.
You’re right - we got a little muddled in what we were trying to say. It would have been more accurate to say something along the lines of the content of the Beta is not yet complete and much of it is the same as the current Toolkit, just organised differently. You are right in that the impact of including new entities and elements required by the LRM does mean a lot of new content, and even when the content hasn’t changed, the changes in navigation can make it feel unfamiliar.
We’re not overly concerned about the lack of rule numbers at the National Library of New Zealand as when we train new cataloguers we de-emphasise these anyway. Our training program focuses on building comfort with the entities and the elements first, which is easier to do if we concentrate on teaching the labels rather than the rule numbers. That’s why when we’re training new cataloguers we spend so much time working on worksheets, labelled with the elements we want them to be recording. We spend a number of weeks in this stage, keeping the RDA elements well away from MARC because that’s when things get really confusing. It’s only when someone is confident thinking “OK, now I’m recording the elements needed to describe the manifestation, and now I’m identifying the elements that identify the work, now I’m deciding which other entities are important and how to identify the relationship between those entities and these entities” do we teach how to squash those elements into MARC (and reveal that some can’t be squashed easily!).
There is going to be some work here as we all get to grips with the new elements as well as those elements that are the same but have different labels. Being forced to think about where to look for something in the new toolkit takes a lot of work right now, but I’m confident that if we know which entity we’re describing, and think about which elements we need to do that, it will start to become easier very quickly.
Then there is the work to build an application profile! I’m personally excited about this because it is essentially what our NLNZ policies are for. That is, our current RDA policies are our official statement on how we apply RDA at the NLNZ. Having to produce a more formal and explicit application profile which spells out exactly which elements we do use and which recording method we prefer for each is going to be a good thing. We’ll be looking at what Library of Congress and the Program for Co-operative Cataloguing do of course, as we have in the past.
It is definitely worth signing up to RDA-L to follow the ongoing analysis.
Ngā mihi,
Anoushka
Anoushka McGuire | Team Leader, Cataloguing Team 1
National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa
Direct Dial: +64 4 470 4524 | www.natlib.govt.nzhttp://www.natlib.govt.nz/
The National Library of New Zealand is part of the Department of Internal Affairs
From: CatSIG [mailto:catsig-bounces@ecs.vuw.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Amanda Cossham
Sent: Monday, 2 July 2018 1:31 PM
To: 'catsig@ecs.vuw.ac.nz'
Subject: [CatSIG] RDA Toolkit Beta ...
Thanks to the editors and writers for the latest issue of Catapult.
I wanted to query one statement in it regarding the RDA Toolkit's beta version on p. 11 of Catapult which says:
· "while there is no intentional change in any of the content of RDA instructions ..."
My understanding was that there had been quite a bit of change to the content including to bring it in line with LRM. There's a summary of it in the 8 June document here: http://rda-rsc.org/news along with some change to wording (which IMO makes it harder to understand especially for new cataloguers or cataloguing students) and the removal of numbering (ditto for both groups; teaching from this version will be challenging).
While I'm aware this is only the beta version and needs a lot more added to it, I am not encouraged so far. I would be interested to hear what others in NZ think about it.
For anyone on CatSIG list who is not also on RDA-L, I do recommend subscribing and following the on-going analysis there.
Regards
Amanda
Dr Amanda Cossham
Principal Lecturer - Library and Information Studies
Learning Delivery
Open Polytechnic | Kuratini Tuwhera
Phone +64 4 9135518 or 0508 650200 ext:5518 | Fax +64 4 9135727
3 Cleary Street, Waterloo | Private Bag 31914, Lower Hutt 5040
http://www.openpolytechnic.ac.nz
http://openpolytechnic.academia.edu/AmandaCossham
________________________________
From: CatSIG
