RDA and the Copy Cataloger

Catalogers in academic libraries are facing a fundamental change in our guidelines and instructions on formulating descriptions for our library resources. A new cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA), has been developed as a replacement for the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. This new standard is based on the conceptual models of FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Data) and FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data). The new standard and its online toolkit were tested over a 9-month period (July 1–December 31, 2010) by the Library of Congress and 26 additional partners. The Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, and National Agricultural library announced in June 2011 that they have decided that RDA should be implemented no sooner than January 2013. However, that does not mean there are not already RDA bibliographic records in our cataloging utilities with plans in the offing to add more. This paper gives a review of RDA development along with a description of how the University of Kansas prepared and trained copy catalogers to handle RDA bibliographic and authority records during the RDA test period (October 1, 2010–January 1, 2011) and our plans for ongoing training during this interim period prior to full implementation.