Libraries

With “Resource Description and Access” (RDA), the global professional community for cataloguing has developed a new standard for the indexing of media that can stay abreast of changed conditions in a modern information society.

Libraries are places where you can see very clearly the rapid progress of information technology: if less than 15 years ago in many libraries a user still looked for books and journals with the help of card catalogues, today he does his research on the computer using online catalogues and search engines – usually in the comfort of his own home.

New standards for a digital world

Outdated standards, however, stand in the way of this rapid development – for instance, in the indexing of media. In Germany and Austria today library holdings are still predominantly catalogued according to the “Rules for Alphabetic Cataloguing” (RAK for short). “These rules were developed in the 1960s and 70s and are designed entirely for card catalogues – back then the internet didn’t yet exist”, explains Christine Frodl of the Centre for Standardisation at the German National Library.

“Today of course our users work completely differently. The internet and the new possibilities for processing information and data have fundamentally altered users’ research practices and their demands on indexing.” There are now also new forms of publications, such as electronic publication.

“Because of the internet, our work and data world is more and more growing together”, says Frodl. “Libraries in recent decades have moved closer together both within countries and internationally. Bibliographic data moves more and more through global networks and is less and less enclosed in narrow contexts. In order to take advantage of the data exchange, international formats and standards have become increasingly important.”

Therefore the Committee for Standardisation, a cooperative association including the large academic libraries and regional library systems in Germany, representatives of the Austrian and Swiss library systems, and German public libraries, already resolved at the end of 2004 to internationalise existing standards and actively to participate in the development of new ones.

Flexible framework for current developments

The new rules that will keep abreast of current conditions are called “Resource Description and Access” (RDA). This new standard promises a flexible framework for describing all resources, whether analogue or digital. “We want a comprehensive indexing, to factor in all materials – also materials from museums and archives”, explains Frodl. Moreover, the resulting data should be easily adaptable to new and still emerging database structures. “In this way we hope to spare ourselves a lot of work in cataloguing. Ideally, each item will be catalogued only once, and these data can then be used globally.”

Responsible for the development of the RDA is the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC). It consists of representatives of the American Library Association, the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, the British Library, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and the Library of Congress. “That may sound at first like a purely Anglo-American project”, says Frodl, “but finally the whole global professional community is collaborating in the development by submitting, as we do at the Centre for Standardisation, commented drafts and proposals.

In addition, the RDA is based in its structure and terminology on the internationally accepted models of the IFLA, the World Association of Libraries: the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, the Functional Requirements for Authority Data and the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles.

Launch decision still pending

The final decision as to whether the promising, modern RDA rules will become the standard in German-speaking countries is still pending. “We are waiting for the decision of the Library of Congress and the American national technical libraries on the definitive introduction of RDA. It will probably be taken in the summer of 2011”, says Christine Frodl. “After that the Committee on Standardisation will have to take a decision for the German-speaking world – perhaps already at its next meeting in October 2011.”