The Co-Publishers of the RDA Toolkit (American Library Association, Canadian Library Association, and CILIP—through its publishing imprint Facet Publishing) are pleased to share an overview of how you will purchase the online RDA Toolkit from anywhere in the world, as well as non-U.S. pricing for the Toolkit. (U.S. pricing has been previously announced.)

We are currently encouraging people to take advantage of the free open-access period through August 31, 2010. If your institution hasn’t yet signed up, please visit www.rdatoolkit.org/openaccess . If you need to process a subscription before our electronic order form and payment gateway go live in the next few weeks, please contact us at rdatoolkit@ala.org so we can process your order. You will not pay for any part of your subscription that falls within the open-access period; we will extend all subscriptions through August 31, 2011.

The Co-Publishers (Facet Publishing [for CILIP UK] and CLA) have assigned ALA Publishing to process and manage all online subscriptions to the RDA Toolkit, from anywhere in the world. This offers customers one point of contact for: purchasing subscriptions; customer service; technical and administrative support; processing payments; renewal reminders and processing of renewals. ALA will process payments in the major currencies and will ensure access to, and support of, the electronic product.

The process for purchasing RDA print products will be similar to how AACR2 products were purchased. The RDA print products will be available directly from each of the Co-Publishers (Facet Publishing outside North America) as well as through various approved retailers, wholesalers, and distributors. RDA print products will be published later in the summer with further details and pricing information announced sometime in July.

Information and relevant updates on how to subscribe online and purchase print will be available at www.rdatoolkit.org.

Pricing for the RDA Toolkit

The Co-Publishers have committed to maintaining price parity as much as possible throughout the world given the constraints created by differences in currency and tax systems.

The solo-user license is for single-user environments where access to the RDA Toolkit is not shared with other individuals in the same institution. By contrast, the site license is designed for multi-user environments where one concurrent user (with the option to add additional concurrent users) is shared with an unlimited number of individuals within the same institution.

For details on RDA Toolkit pricing in the major currencies, please visit www.rdatoolkit.org/pricing.

Double-User Offer

A double-user offer is in place for those who subscribe at any site license level to the RDA Toolkit before August 31, 2011. During the evaluation and initial implementation of RDA, when users are likely to need more frequent concurrent access, subscribers will receive double the purchased number of concurrent users of the RDA Toolkit at no additional charge for their first subscription period. (For example, buy a 2-user site license but get a 4-user license for no additional cost.)

Consortia and Group Subscriptions

If you are interested in subscription pricing for consortia or other centralized purchasing groups, please contact us at rdatoolkit@ala.org with "Consortium" or "Group purchase" in the subject line and provide some basic information about your group. The more answers to the prequalifying questions (www.rdatoolkit.org/pricing/consortia) you can include, the more efficiently we will be able to serve you. RDA Toolkit staff will follow up with you on receipt of your message.

Training and Classroom Access

To allow for training of future and current catalogers and other metadata professionals who need to become familiar with RDA, we are offering access to the RDA Toolkit. The institution must purchase a subscription that matches its ongoing cataloging needs and then inform RDA Toolkit staff via the RDA Toolkit Support Center (www.rdatoolkit.org/support) of the number of additional users needed for any given training or class period. RDA Toolkit access will be granted for that period to the additional users at no additional charge. If an institution does not yet subscribe, but wants access for LIS or other training, the site license base price will apply.