The April 2021 release of RDA Toolkit was published on April 6th. It includes the addition of more policy statements from the Library of Congress - Program for Cooperative Cataloging and the British Library and introduces a small number of Best Practices for the Music Library Association. There are also fixes and minor improvements to existing Toolkit functionality, including the introduction of blue highlight in the yellow Condition boxes to improve visibility.
Now available for purchase on the ALA Store website, Introduction to RDA: A Guide to the Basics after 3R, Second Edition is Christine Oliver’s primer guide to the RDA cataloging standard for library and information science students, records managers, catalogers, and other library professionals. The new print book specifically covers the changes to RDA reflected in the official RDA Toolkit launched on December 15th.
On January 26th a free live demo was held to introduce the public to the redesigned RDA Toolkit. Now that the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project (3R) is complete, it is a good time to get acquainted with all the features and functions of the new Toolkit. The hour-long webinar, New RDA Toolkit Demo, covered navigating and searching the improved RDA Toolkit, new features and functions of the site, and some tips for getting the most out of it.
RDA: Resource Description and Access users experienced the long-awaited elevation of the beta RDA Toolkit to official status on Tuesday, December 15, 2020. The new Toolkit had been undergoing restructure and redesign through the “3R Project” aimed at bringing the RDA standard into alignment with the IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) Library Reference Model and the RDA Toolkit into compliance with current accessibility standards.
A new release of the beta RDA Toolkit was published on December 15th. The release marks the end of the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project, commonly known as the 3R Project. With this release the beta Toolkit site that debuted in 2018 becomes the official RDA Toolkit, available at access.rdatoolkit.org. The original RDA Toolkit will remain available to all subscribers at original.rdatoolkit.org. The original site can also be accessed from the new Toolkit through the Resources tab and from the top banner menu bar.
RDA Toolkit has always offered an alignment between RDA elements and the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic formats. This is not, strictly speaking, a linked data or semantic map because there is no formal representation of MARC 21 in Resource Description Framework (RDF). Instead, an alignment matches an RDA element to a string that represents the corresponding MARC 21 tag, indicators, and subfield. The alignments are one-to-many: a single RDA element aligns with multiple combinations of tag, indicators, and subfield. The alignments are complex.
This 3R Project will come to a close with the elevation of the beta RDA Toolkit to official RDA status in December. This "Switchover" (that's what we are calling the move) may be causing some anxiety among Toolkit users, or at least raising some questions in regard to what exactly will happen. The following statements attempt to address some questions users might have and hopefully ease any anxieties there might be.
When the RDA Toolkit beta site debut in June 2018, what had been relationship designators in the original toolkit became relationship elements. The Relationship Matrix was included in the beta site as a replacement for the appendices I-L that allows users to do a quick look-up of relationship elements. Unfortunately from the debut of the Relationship Matrix the feature has suffered from inaccuracies in its content and difficulties processing updates to the content.
We have added a new series of videos on the RDA Toolkit YouTube channel called RDA Concepts. These are brief videos intended as an introduction to some key concepts in RDA. Both new and experienced RDA users may find these videos helpful as they explain concepts using the RDA Toolkit Beta Site.
With many catalogers and metadata specialists working remotely these days, some may find that they have a bit more time on their hands and have an inkling to dive into a topic that has been put off for awhile. This might be an opportune time to dive into the 3R project and the beta RDA Toolkit. In December the beta site will become the official RDA site, and there's plenty of time to get up to speed on the changes to the RDA standard and new Toolkit functionality.
