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  • RDA: Strategies for Implementation by Magda El-Sherbini
  • Leanne Finnigan
RDA: Strategies for Implementation, Magda El-Sherbini. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2013. 394 pages. $65.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-1168-6)

Resource description and access (RDA) is the new cataloging standard for Englishlanguage libraries that replaces the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2). The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA began work on the new standard in 2004, hoping to address changing needs and behaviors of library users and the limitations of AACR2 in describing the types of resources libraries make available. The committee was made up of representatives from the American Library Association, the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, the British Library, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, the United Kingdom’s Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Germany’s Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (German National Library), and the Library of Congress. The panel released the first draft of the new standard in November 2008. After much discussion, testing, and revision, the Library of Congress officially adopted it in March 2013. Since its inception, catalogers have scrambled to prepare for the transition to RDA at their own institutions, often daunted by the challenges of preparing local systems and providing training during a time when resources are scarce.

In RDA: Strategies for Implementation, Magda El-Sherbini, the head of the cataloging at the Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, presents a somewhat useful, though already outdated, handbook for librarians looking to learn about RDA rules and how to implement them. El-Sherbini has extensive experience organizing training in this area, having led Ohio State’s participation in the U.S. national test of [End Page 308] RDA, as well as teaching an online course on planning and preparing for the new standard through the American Library Association.

The book, which has extensive bibliographies throughout, begins with a brief overview of RDA, illustrating the context for its development and adoption, as well as outlining its objectives and principles. It then offers a breakdown of the major differences between AACR2 and RDA, providing side-by-side comparisons of how the two standards are applied, and addressing topics such as capitalization and abbreviations, sources of information used for description, and the construction of access points. Readers should be aware that some of the examples were written before certain elements of RDA were adopted, such as the now widespread use of MARC (machinereadable cataloging) tag 264 for publication information. The third chapter of the book gives implementation strategies for both catalogers and systems personnel, though much of the advice assumes the reader works in an institution with a large staff. These suggestions include tips for in-house training, recommended resources for continuing education, advice on integrating new RDA records into legacy data, and a rundown of adjustments that need to be made to local systems to reflect changes and extensions in the MARC format. Here again, a number of revisions to the format have been made since the writing of the book, so librarians should consult more recent technical bulletins to get up-to-date, comprehensive information on MARC format changes.

Chapters 4 through 6 cover the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), which were developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in 1990 and serve as the conceptual framework for RDA. In an earlier chapter, El-Sherbini identifies FRBR as an essential concept that should serve as the starting point for RDA training, and she does a brilliant job in chapter 4 through 6 making these abstract concepts clear. The author focuses much attention on explaining FRBR’s group entities and how they intersect and relate within bibliographic records. There are helpful figures and charts as well as a plethora of examples that help illustrate FRBR.

Chapter 7 provides an overview of the RDA Toolkit, the online portal to the new cataloging rules. So much functionality has been added to the Toolkit since the book was written, however, that librarians would be better served looking to the webinar tutorials on the Toolkit Web site itself for updated information. Chapter 8 is made up of a variety of examples of RDA bibliographic and authority records with valuable explanatory notes. The book...

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