RDA may be a ‘prelude’ to semantic web

See also Digital Libraries Glossary, Dublin Core, Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS), and Web 3.0

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a new standard for resource description in a digital world and built on the foundations of AACR2 and generations of cataloguing rules before it. RDA provides a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on description and access covering all types of content and media. The content of RDA has been developed in a collaborative process led by the Joint Steering Committee (JSC). The project is overseen by the Committee of Principals representing American Library Association, Canadian Library Association, CILIP, Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, British Library, and National Library of Australia. In early 2010, an RDA Toolkit was published by the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and CILIP (through its publishing imprint Facet Publishing).

Why RDA?

Library catalogues today need to harness the full power of metadata that librarians have carefully created over decades. For those who describe resources, the future challenge will be to create metadata that meets users’ needs and facilitates searching and display on OPACs. RDA is a building block in the creation of better catalogues and resource discovery systems and its benefits include:

• a mix of conceptual models of FRBR (functional requirements for bibliographic data) and FRAD (functional requirements for authority data) to help users find information more easily
• a flexible framework for content description of digital resources that serves needs of libraries
• a fit with emerging database technologies enabling institutions to introduce efficiencies in data capture and storage retrieval
• evolving cataloguing principles from AACR2R with rules carried over or adapted to RDA

To be released in 2010

RDA is set to be released in June 2010. The idea for RDA emerged from the International Conference on the Principles & Future Development of AACR2 held in Toronto in 1997. Substantial revisions to AACR2 were required at that time, which encouraged adoption of a new title for what had been envisaged as a third edition of AACR. RDA departs from AACR in its reliance on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). These principles identify ‘user tasks’ a library catalogue makes available and the hierarchy of relationships within bibliographic records. Descriptions produced using RDA are intended to be compatible with large numbers of existing records created under AACR2.

Towards the semantic web

The move to RDA is a first step towards the semantic web and the resource description framework (RDF). These tools, standards and technologies are set to integrate various traditions and practices of knowledge organization for years to come. The semantic web covers the domain specific traditions and practices of librarianship as well as the practices of the metadata movement through the lens of resource description. This will accommodate the Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, which aims to move library cataloguing into the centre of the semantic web.