RDA Toolkit

Countdown Clock for Original RDA Toolkit Set for May 2026 jhennelly Tue, 05/23/2023 - 09:44

The RDA Board in consultation with the Copyright Holders of RDA have determined that a hard date for the removal of the original RDA Toolkit website is needed. This determination was made against a backdrop of giving user communities plenty of time for planning in their transition to official RDA. The Board plans to begin a countdown clock in May 2026 (specific date still to be determined), with the removal of the original Toolkit taking place a year later—May 2027. This plan was presented to the RDA Steering Committee last week, and the RSC fully supported this decision.

Server Migration Update

UPDATE: As of 3pm CST on January 14th, the migration is complete. 

UPDATE: The migration process is underway. You may encounter a brief disruption to service as the change propagates across the internet. Simply clear your browser cache and refresh. Contact us at rdatoolkit@ala.org if you experience an access issue that lasts longer than an hour.

UPDATE: The migration has been postponed to Friday, January 14th.

July 2021 RDA Toolkit Release

The July 2021 release of RDA Toolkit was published on July 15th. It includes the addition of more policy statements from the Library of Congress - Program for Cooperative Cataloging, the British Library and Music Library Association Best Practices. 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.

Where to Find Examples in the Beta Toolkit

We have heard from some users that examples have been few and far between. Because the RDA text is still a work in progress on the beta site, it has been difficult to write examples. When the 3R Project is complete we expect there to be many more examples in the new Toolkit as compared to the original one. Also the new Toolkit will feature new types of examples, including examples for recording methods, relationship examples, and examples in context. The attached list will guide users to instructions with a variety of examples.

March 2024 RDA Toolkit Release

A new release was posted to RDA Toolkit last week. The March 2024 release includes a light changes to RDA content, the introduction of the new Community Resources space, and the additon of the Orientation version of the Guidncce menu in French and Finnish.

Changes to the RDA standard include correction of typos, broken or missing links, etc. Most notable is the remvoal of some condition options the transription guidance to the Legacy Community Resources pages. There were also updates to the French and Finnish translations and all policy satements sets.

March 2023 RDA Toolkit Release

A new release of RDA Toolkit was ready on March 24, 2023, but due to some technical issues, its posting was delayed until March 27th. The release was a small one compared to past releases. Minor changes to English language RDA were made for the purpose of clarity and consistency. Revisions to the Guidance: Data Elements provide more explanation about the relationship and application of element supertypes and subtypes.

December 2022 RDA Toolkit Release

A new release of RDA Toolkit was posted on December 16, 2022. It included updates to both the English and Finnish versions of RDA. There were changes to the English RDA text related to RSC approval of two proposals at its July meeting. These changes added instructions to two Item and two Manifestation elements to make them consistent with other RDA elements that permit recording methods for non-RDA vocabulary encoding schemes, and made additions to the “Recording an unstructured description” section of five elements 

Un avant-goût du RDA Toolkit officiel

Dominique Bourassa of Yale University will conduct a French language webinar on terminology of the Official RDA Toolkit and how to "decipher" instructions to catalog a monograph. The webinar is free to all. A full description with registration information follows.

Un avant-goût du RDA Toolkit officiel

Formatrice : Dominique Bourassa

Date et heure : 10 h-11 h CST, le jeudi 8 décembre 2022