Book Review: Introducing RDA: a Guide to the Basics

The book's title tells it all. This is a very general introduction to RDA and at times I felt it was repetitive in the information. (Such as using the example of the cataloger no longer abbreviating words when transcribing information from the object to the record. This one was used a lot!) But, if you're a student in grad school, haven't taken a MARC class and just want to inform yourself of the future in cataloging, this book is a good start.

The seven chapters are:

1. What is RDA?
2. RDA and the International Context
3. FRBR and FRAD in RDA
4. Continuity with AACR2
5. Where Do We See Changes?
6. Implementing RDA
7. Advantages, Present and Future

The book mainly talks about the foundation and concepts behind RDA, which is basically to support the user in her search for information by seperating descriptive elements from each other and making relationships explicit so that the user could do this sort of search: "this item was created by that person who also created these things, one of which was published by this company, which specializes in audiobooks." Katrina Clifford also reviews the book for Ariadne and probably does a much better job than I could.

As I'll be returning the book to the library (not the sort of book you'd want to buy), I'm going to take a moment to list some of the resources in no particular order that I'd like to read for further, perhaps more concrete, information:

• Coyle, K. (2010). RDA vocabularies for a twenty-first century data environment. Library Technology Reports. 46(2).
• Delsey, T. (2008). RDA, FRBR/FRAD and implementation scenarios. 5JSC/Editor/4; www.rda-jsc.org/doc/editor4.pdf
• Delsey, T. (2007). RDA database implementation scenarios. 5JSC/Editor/2; www.rda-jsc.org/docs/5editor2.pdf
• JSC presentations: www.rda-jsc.org/rdapresentations.html
• Beacom, M. (2007). Cataloging cultural objects (CCO), resource description and Access (RDA), and the future of metadata content. VRA Bulletin 34(1), 81-85.
• IFLA Study Group on the FRBR's Function Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report. Munich: Saur, 1998. www.ifla.org/en/publications/functional-requirements-for-bibliographic-records.
• Tillett, B. (2004). What is FRBR? A conceptual model for the bibliographic universe. Washington, DC: Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/cds/downloads/FRBR.PDF
• Curran, Mary. (2009). Serials in RDA: A starter's tour and kit. Serials Librarian 57(4), 306-324.
• Hitchens, A, & Symons, E. (2009).  Preparing catalogers for RDA training. Cataloging & Classificiation Quarterly 47(8), 691-707.

All in all a good resource to get you started. It certainly helped me to understand the structural differences between AACR2 (anglo bias, bias on container of information object) and RDA (entity relationship based) and it provided some good resources for further study. I'd like more (free) info on FRAD and FRSAD (authority and subject authority data), but alas, I've not stumbled upon it. I'll share it here when I do.