Maritta, the head of our cataloging and bibliographic services department asked if we could post this announcement on our blog, we’re always happy to share information about RDA with our readers, so here you go.
Backstage is pleased to announce its participation plan for the current US National Test for RDA.
Backstage will be participating in the test as one of two vendor institutions. As a provider of cataloging services, Backstage will be evaluating the effects of RDA on costs and services to library and publisher clients in relation to cataloging, copy cataloging, retrospective conversion, and reclassification. Specific attention will be paid to the ease and time of training entry level para-professionals for working in an RDA environment (compared with an AACR environment).
The test dates designated by the RDA Test administration panel are as follows:
July-September, training & practice time; familiarization with the RDA toolkit
October-December, the formal test & processing of test materials in RDA; complete surveys
January-March, Review and report by Test administration
Our schedule will follow the prescribed schedule as set by the Test administration panel: we will be processing material in October-November, and will be evaluating with a formal report in December.
For our test, we will be training the following staff in RDA: three experienced catalogers (trained and highly experienced in cataloging with AACR2), one para-professional with limited cataloging experience (newly trained and currently cataloging with AACR2), and one inexperienced paraprofessional (no prior cataloging training at all). We will be running comparable side-by-side testing of material and training in AACR2.
In addition, Backstage is preparing for any RDA records anticipated by its automated services department, including Authority Control and Marcadia. Data will be tested and systems will be ready to appropriately process RDA data starting October 1, 2010.
Tags: Announcements, Cataloging, RDA