About RDA

RDA: Resource Description and Access is the new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world. Built on the foundations established by AACR2, RDA provides a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource 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.

The project is overseen by the Committee of Principals representing:

• American Library Association
• Canadian Library Association
• CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
• Library of Congress
• Library and Archives Canada
• British Library
• National Library of Australia

About the Joint Steering Committee

The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) is the new name of the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR. The JSC was responsible for maintaining the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, and is now working on RDA, scheduled to be released in June 2010. In order to enable the JSC and constituencies to concentrate on this work, the last update to AACR2 was in 2005.

The constituent organizations represented on the JSC are:

• American Library Association
• Australian Committee on Cataloguing
• British Library
• Canadian Committee on Cataloguing
• CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
• Library of Congress

For more information about the JSC please visit http://www.rda-jsc.org.

About the Co-Publishers

The RDA Toolkit is published by the Co-Publishers for RDA:

• American Library Association
• Canadian Library Association
• Facet Publishing, the publishing arm of CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals