The Countdown Clock and Transitioning to Official RDA

The Countdown Clock

On May 11, 2026 a Countdown Clock will appear in the top blue banner of the Original RDA Toolkit.
This clock will count the final 365 days that the Original Toolkit will be available online and serve as a daily reminder that your institution needs to prepare for the transition to the Official RDA Toolkit.
The clock will start on May 11, 2026 at 12:00 midnight Hawaii-Aleutian Time (UTC -10) and will end 365 days later in the same time zone.
On May 12, 2027, the original site will be removed from the web. The PDFs of the Original RDA Toolkit pages (in all language versions) will be immediately available in the Official RDA Toolkit’s Instruction Archive, located in the Revision History section of the Resources tab.
The web pages of the Original RDA Toolkit will eventually be made available through the ALA Archive, hosted by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. More information about this transfer will be provided at a later date.

The varied approaches and experiences of institutions that have already transitioned to Official RDA are documented in “Implementing Official RDA”.

Two valuable resources to bookmark are the RDA Toolkit Learning Resources and the RDA Toolkit YouTube Channel.
Chris Oliver’s book Introducing RDA: A Guide to the Basics after 3R, Second Edition examines the differences between original and official RDA.
A series of video presentations by Charlotte Christensen entitled Finding Your Way with RDA (1, 2, 3) provides a very accessible introduction to official RDA. The videos have been translated into Spanish.
“RDA Teaching & Training Tips” is a pamphlet by Elisa Sze that provides approaches for introducing catalogers to Official RDA.

Here is a list of brief videos demonstrating how to navigate the RDA Toolkit.

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