Cataloging SIG Breakout Session

Minutes, Fall Meeting 2010

Cataloging SIG Breakout Session

8 October 2010

The breakout session was attended by ten participants representing HACC, Penn College, Susquehanna University, the U.S. Army War College, and the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. Cataloging SIG Co-chair, Lori Sekela, of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, led the discussion

Due to professional and personal commitments, Lori shared she would be stepping down as co-chair following the Fall meeting. Tracy Powell, Cataloging Coordinator for Susquehanna University, offered to assume this role. Tracy’s offer was unanimously accepted by the group. She will share responsibilities for chairing the SIG with Jenny Silkett of the U.S. Army War College.

Resource Description and Access (RDA) was the main topic of conversation during the breakout session. RDA consists of the proposed new set of rules for describing materials, meant to replace the current Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed., rev. (AACR2r). A group of U.S. libraries, including the Library of Congress, is currently involved in the testing of RDA, and a report with their recommendations for national adoption is expected for release in early 2011.

All attendees had experimented with the online version of RDA, the RDA Toolkit, during the free-trial period earlier this summer. Most everyone found the resource difficult to use. There was also concern regarding the additional cost of the resource on top of other cataloging tools, such as Cataloger’s Desktop.

Most participants shared they were in a “wait and see” mode regarding RDA, and do not plan to become early adopters. Training options were discussed, such as ALCTS webinars and e-forums, but the consensus was that while catalogers want to keep up-to-date, they do not want to spend a lot of training time and money until the code is in its finalized form. Lori shared some of the anticipated changes she was aware of, such as the use of relationship designators, the use of noun phrases in the statement of responsibility, and the dissolution of the “rule of 3”. Everyone agreed it would be difficult to “unlearn” AACR2 rules and adjust to new ones.

Attendees also discussed other general issues including local policies for digital projects, special cataloging requests from public services, and establishing new item codes in the ILS.