RBMS Policy Statements Published in the RDA Toolkit

RDA Examples Editor Jessica Grzegorski (pictured) and her colleagues in the RBMS RDA Editorial Group have announced the publication of the RBMS Policy Statements (RBMS PS) in the RDA Toolkit. 

As described in the Background section of DCRMR (Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials RDA Edition), "Following ALA Annual in 2019, a decision was made to rewrite the DCRM suite as a single RDA-compliant integrating resource and write lightweight policy statements to link from the Toolkit to the revised DCRM". Since then, members of the RBMS RDA Editorial Group have been active within the RDA Policy Writers Group. James Hennelly (ALA Digital Reference), who chairs the Policy Writers Group, praised the work done by the RBMS Policy Writers, and was very pleased indeed to be able to publish the RBMS PS in the October Release of the Toolkit, where subscribers can read more about them on their landing page. 

RSC Chair Renate Behrens also passed on her congratulations, on behalf of the RDA Steering Committee. "We know that the DCRMR is used in many countries as well as the USA," she said, "and so the incorporation of RBMS Policy Statements within the Toolkit will be an asset to rare book cataloguers across the globe, including those who use DCRMR and those writing their own application profiles and rules for cataloguing rare books in other language communities."

Here is the full text of the announcement made yesterday by the RBMS Editorial Group on RDA-L and other discussion lists for cataloguers of rare materials:

"Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the publication of the RBMS Policy Statements in the Official RDA Toolkit. The RBMS Policy Statements are maintained by the RBMS RDA Editorial Group, a subgroup of the Bibliographic Standards Committee (BSC) of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The statements provide guidance on the description of rare materials typically found in rare book, manuscript, and special collections repositories.

The RBMS Policy Statements are based on Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (DCRMR), an open-source, integrating resource that will be updated over time. DCRMR is an RDA-aligned revision of a suite of manuals published as Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (DCRM), which cover various formats of rare materials. The current version of DCRMR includes instructions for the description of rare books only. As instructions for additional formats (e.g., rare graphics) are incorporated into DCRMR from the original DCRM suite, the scope of the RBMS Policy Statements will expand accordingly. For information on the application of RDA and the DCRM manuals, consult the BSC's statement on DCRM and RDA.

Most of the RBMS Policy Statements are brief, concise statements that provide guidance on the application of options in the RDA Toolkit. All of the statements include hyperlinked citations to relevant instructions in DCRMR for further information. Although the text of the RBMS Policy Statements is available without a subscription via a landing page in the RDA Toolkit, a subscription to the Toolkit is required to view them in context with RDA instructions.

We sincerely thank all current and past members of the RBMS RDA Editorial Group, previous DCRM and policy statement editorial groups, and the Bibliographic Standards Committee, as well as the larger rare materials cataloging community, for their contributions to writing, editing, and reviewing the RBMS Policy Statements. We are grateful for your collegiality, dedication, and good humor.

Best,

RBMS RDA Editorial Group"