Charlotte Christensen has a masters degree in librarianship (MLIS) and is a professionally registered librarian with the New Zealand library and information professionals association, LIANZA. After a decade in a metropolitan public library environment, Charlotte moved to the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (NLNZ) where she has specialised as a senior cataloguer for the past 17 years. She was involved in preparing NLNZ's transition from AACR2 to Original RDA, and more recently has been part of the writing of policy and training materials for NLNZ's transition to Official RDA which began on 1 August 2024.

Beyond RDA, Charlotte is a long-term member of Te Whakakaokao, the working group behind Ngā Upoko Tukutuku which provides Māori language subject access terms for use in descriptions by collecting institutions. It is significant to note that Ngā Upoko Tukutuku is not a translation service for English concepts, requests come in from libraries and other collecting institutions with a need to describe a particular object or resource and the appropriate terms are determined to provide culturally relevant access. Charlotte's role is on the cataloguing side of this work, assisting in converting Te Whakakaokao's outputs into a form that will be accessible to descriptive specialists who lack the cultural and language background to make best use of it. At times she also presents in training sessions for cataloguers wanting to learn how best to apply the terms in their own context. She has been involved in this effort since 2009.

She has also been involved as a cataloguing standards advisor to a consortium of over 40 public libraries in New Zealand since 2012. The Kōtui consortium is backed by the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa but is independent and includes member libraries from across the entire country.

Charlotte has been the RSC representative from the Oceania region RDA Committee (ORDAC) since February 2023 and is currently serving her second term.

News Items About Charlotte

• 17 April 2025: Practical Implementation of Official RDA at NLNZ
• 30 January 2025: Second Term for Charlotte Christensen and Jack Ennis-Butler
• 14 November 2024: RDA Today - Outreach Event Presentations Online Now

Presentations by Charlotte