Robert L. Maxwell, RSC Representative for North America

Robert L. Maxwell, RSC Representative for North America

Robert Maxwell, standing in front of a wood-panelled wall. He is wearing a cream cardigan and green and cream-checked shirt, and dark, half-rimmed glasses, and is smiling into the camera. He has short, white hair.

Robert L. Maxwell is a senior librarian at the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, where he has chaired the Special Collections and Formats Catalog Department and catalogues special collections materials, including early printed books and fine printing. His assignments there also include collecting and cataloguing classics materials (Latin and Greek) for the main library. 

He was awarded the American Library Association’s 2024 Margaret Mann Citation for his contributions to the cataloguing profession. He also won the 2002 ALA Highsmith Library Literature award for the book Maxwell’s Guide to Authority Work (2002) and is the author of a number of other books on cataloguing published by ALA, including Maxwell’s Handbook for RDA (2013), winner of the 2014 ABC-CLIO Library Publishing Award and the 2015 Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Outstanding Publication Award. 

He has taught cataloguing at Brigham Young University and the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science and has chaired the Bibliographic Standards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). He has been a voting member of ALA’s Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA), the body responsible for developing official ALA positions on revisions to RDA, and the liaison to CC:DA from the ALA Subject Analysis Committee to CC:DA. He has co-chaired the Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Standing Committee on Training, has been a member of the PCC Standing Committee on Standards, and is one of two ALA representatives to the North American RDA Committee (NARDAC). In addition to an MLS from the University of Arizona, he holds a JD from Brigham Young University and a PhD in classical languages and literatures from the University of Toronto.

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Image: Robert in November 2024 at the RSC Meeting in Washington. Photo by Anne Welsh

News Items About Robert

Presentations by Robert

Presentation DateTitlePresenter / AuthorSponsor / VenueNotes
16 April 2024RDA Training Panel DiscussionAdam Baron, Thomas Brenndorfer, Robert Maxwell, Melanie Polutta, Louise Spiteri, Elisa SzeNARDAC / RDA ToolkitPanel begins at 01:57:35
16 April 2024NARDAC Spring Update ForumClara Liao (NARDAC Chair), Robert Maxwell, Elisa Sze and othersNARDAC / RDA Toolkit 
27 September 2022Representative Expression Elements in Authority RecordsRobert MaxwellAmerican Library Association Authority Control Interest GroupVideo of this presentation begins at 00:02:13
25 April 2022Cataloging Using Official RDA : RDA, How to Use It with DocumentationRobert Maxwell and Melanie PoluttaNARDAC Update ForumVideo of this presentation: Maxwell presentation begins at 1:16:35
27 September 2022Representative Expression Elements in Authority RecordsRobert MaxwellAmerican Library Association Authority Control Interest GroupVideo of this presentation begins at 00:02:13

 

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