Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a set of instructions for the cataloguing of books and other materials held in libraries and other cultural organizations such as museums and galleries. It is the successor to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2), the current standard set of cataloguing guidelines for English language libraries. RDA was initially released in summer 2010. The three United States national libraries (Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library) organized a nation-wide test of the new standards,[1] following widespread controversy amongst cataloguers.[2]
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RDA emerged from the International Conference on the Principles & Future Development of AACR held in Toronto in 1997.[3] It was quickly realised that substantial revision of AACR2 was required, which encouraged the adoption of a new title for what had been envisaged as a third edition of AACR.
The primary distinction between RDA and AACR is structural. RDA is organised based on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). These principles identify both the 'user tasks' which a library catalog should make possible and a hierarchy of relationships in bibliographic data.[4] Descriptions produced using the instructions of RDA are intended to be compatible with the large number of existing records created under the rules of AACR2.[4]
In the U.S., the cataloguing establishment has expressed mixed to negative opinions on the new standards.[5] Michael Gorman, one of the authors of AACR2, was particularly vocal in expression his opposition to the new guidelines.[2] Test participants claimed that the online interface for the new standard was slow and inefficient, and that the search function was especially ineffective.[5] Despite these complaints, the majority of testing participants suggested that upon tweaking the interface and training cataloguers familiar with the format-based approach of AACR2 to adapt to RDA's FRBR-based approach, RDA would be an acceptable change.[5]
On 13 June 2011, the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine released the results of their testing.[6] After observing "The test revealed that there is little discernible immediate benefit in implementing RDA alone" and "The Coordinating Committee wrestled with articulating a business case for implementing RDA", the report recommended that RDA be adopted by the three national libraries, contingent on several changes being made.[6] The earliest possible date for implementation was given as January 2013, as the consensus emerging from the analysis of the test data showed that while there were discernible benefits to implementing RDA, these benefits would not be realized without significant changes, possibly to include developing a successor to the MARC format.[6]