MARS Authority Control

Recently one of our Project Managers, Jeremy, sat down to watch the latest RDA webinar, these are his thoughts and notes from the webinar.

On June 17-18, Troy Linker from ALA Publishing presented a few webinars about how to make the most out of the open-access period for the RDA Toolkit.  This open-access will be from the launch of the RDA Toolkit in mid-June (any day now) until the end of August.   A few people from Backstage attended this webinar and here is a summary of what was presented.

First off, Troy went over a brief overview of what RDA and the RDA toolkit are and who created these.  This was a very brief and basic overview that didn’t really have any new information.

Next, the open-access period was discussed.  They still don’t have an exact date for when this will start, but it should be very soon.  There will be no charge to access the RDA toolkit during this time.  It is possible to pre-register for access right now on the RDA Toolkit website.

The RDA Toolkit has a built-in help system that will serve as a manual.  The website currently has an FAQ section with many questions about RDA.  There will be an RDA Toolkit Support Center for problems with the toolkit.  The website also has tools for presenting on RDA and a calendar of different training sessions.

After discussing these things, Troy did a demonstration of the toolkit.  Within the toolkit, there will be the text of RDA, the RDA element set view, mappings, user-contributed content, relationship diagrams, schemas, and also AACR2.

There are two ways to have access to the RDA Toolkit: either as a solo-user or as an institution.   User profiles can be created for every user, no matter how many users there are for each subscription.  With a user profile, you can save, create, and share user-created content through the toolkit.  For an institutional user, it is necessary to login as the institution and then to login as the user in order to access your personal user-created content.

The RDA toolkit has been designed to work well with all of the major internet browsers.  Once you have logged in to your account, you will be able to access all items in the RDA Toolkit.  You can personalize the toolkit with bookmarks, saved searches, workflows, and mappings through the “My Profile” link.  There is a link to the support center to report anything that is causing difficulties.

On the left-side of the page, there are tabs for RDA, Tools, and Resources.  The RDA tab has the full text of RDA that can be browsed through with an extensive hierarchy.  The Tools tab has the RDA element set view, mappings, workflows, mappings, and entity relationship diagrams.  Currently, the only mappings that are available are between RDA and MARC bibliographic and authority records.  They plan to add more mappings in the future and it is also possible to add your own mapping and share it with others.  It is also possible to create and share your own workflows.  The Resources tab will have content such as AACR2.

There are two options for searching: an RDA quick search and an advanced search.  With the quick search, you are only able to search the content of RDA and not the other resources provided in the toolkit.  With an advanced search, you can limit your search to any of the resources provided.  After you have completed a search, you can save it for future reference.

Troy briefly discussed subscription and pricing options, including an option to purchase a printed version of RDA.   The main thing that was emphasized with this is that they are able to work with libraries in specials situations, but they have to treat everyone equally.  Some special situations that may get special treatment would be pricing for consortiums, extra users for training purposes, etc.

There are a few future enhancements that they are looking at, such as linking from AACR2 to RDA, linking to other cataloging tools, improving user preferences, and integrating translations into the toolkit.

In the demo, Troy made everything look very user-friendly and easy to access.  Once the open-access period has begun, it will be interesting to see how easy it is to use when there are thousands to people constantly accessing it.

These webinars were recorded and will be available on http://www.rdatoolkit.org.  The questions that participant’s had will also be posted to the FAQ section of this website.

Well, June is here, and we’re counting down to the launch of RDA (Resource Description and Access).  The launch date is set for the middle of the month (we’re keeping our fingers crossed) but I don’t believe there is an exact date set.  What is actually being launched is the RDA Toolkit.  This is the online access to the new rules.  In the words of the publishers:  “The resource to help you navigate from AACR2 to RDA—the new, unified standard for resource description and access, designed for the digital world and an expanding universe of metadata users.”

The Toolkit will be available by subscription, but to help ease the transition, the publishers are offering a complimentary open-access period from the launch date of mid-June to August 31, 2010.  You can sign up here:

http://www.rdatoolkit.org/openaccess

And to help you get started, the publishers have also provided a guided tour of the Toolkit and a list of other training events.  Here’s the link:

http://www.rdatoolkit.org/training – scroll down to find the guided tour.  You’ll need Adobe Flash Player, but they provide the link for a free download.

And now, for something really different.  For all of you anticipating the arrival of RDA with acute trepidation, (and even those of you looking forward to it with excitement) I’ve found a way to ease the pain.  Let me introduce you to the “Resource Description and Access Happy Fun Time Companion” from Penny Baker and the folks at the Clark Art Institute Library.  (CAI is one of the US Testing Partners.)  I think this site is the most fun to be had with RDA, but don’t let the title or its looks fool you.  Along with the craziness, this site is chock full of serious and valuable information about all things RDA, FRBR, training, new MARC fields, examples, etc.  I was trying to compile a new list of RDA related links, but this site has them all. There’s too much to describe, you just have to look through it.  Go ahead, learn lots and have some fun.  Find the hilarity in all the hysteria.

http://sites.google.com/site/codlinandshort/

Happy reading!

Karen

I watched the RDA Toolkit webinar today, put on by the RDA group. I thought I’d share some of the impressions that I got out of it in the hopes that it would be somewhat useful. I should start off by noting that they did not intend this webinar to be very in-depth, but rather a kick-off of more information to come.

RDA will fully replace AACR2. This should go without saying, but I thought I’d better say it anyway. Even though the rules will be replaced, the RDA Toolkit will contain the full text of AACR2. The idea may be that if you know where a rule is specified in AACR2, you can look it up and it will cross link to the RDA rule. This should be a fairly handy feature for those of us who have worked with AACR2 for a long time.

Also mentioned was the ability for user generated content to be accessible in the RDA Toolkit. Whether this will be restricted to sharing information within your institution, or how it will be spread to other institutions is up in the air.  I’m not sure if this is something they’ve thought too much about yet.

A subscription can be for a single individual user or multi-user. If multiple users will be connecting, you will have a profile login in addition to your user login. This allows one institution to have a single or a few RDA licenses but have many more users, but there can only be as many users logged in at a time as there are licenses. For example, if you have 3 subscriptions you could have 10 (or more) users with their own profiles, but only 3 could connect at a given time.

The RDA Toolkit is a web-based collection of documents, and it’s been put together in a pretty slick manner. The current visuals don’t do justice to the functionality that the website offers, though I’m sure those visuals (graphics, fonts, and design) will be updated prior to launch. For example, the RDA tab (found on the upper left side of the screen) gives one access to an expanding tree-view of the RDA rules. Clicking a category will take you to the section in the chapter you’ve selected. You can place and share bookmarks and notes inside of the document. It’s very well done, as I said. My concern is that clicking on a subheading or a chapter opens the entire chapter; the example he showed would have been 95 pages if printed. The processing power needed to run all of the javascript code and the sheer amount of data being worked with leads me to believe that there could be some very slow pages, especially for users with older computers, slow internet connections, or heaven forbid are still running Internet Explorer 6.

Inside the documents you’ll find a plethora of links and cross references, nicely color coded and branded as to what sort of information they lead to. For example, links to other sections in the RDA rules book are coded in blue, while links to glossary terms have a triangle.  They also include links between the AACR2 rules and corresponding RDA rules.  This will be really useful when moving from AACR2 to RDA.

Searching RDA will allow you a nice number of options.  I particularly liked the fact that you could sort the results in terms of relevancy or order they appeared in the document.  You are also able to limit searches to specific chapters, sections, media types, content, examples, etc.

A fair amount of time was spent discussing how they wanted to work with vendors to allow them to link into the Toolkit within their products (to give specific helps and instructions).  However, the institution will still need a subscription or the links won’t work. Another topic people are worried about is a print version. They seem to believe that it isn’t necessary, or a good idea.  You can print each chapter on your own, however, like I mentioned earlier, chapter 3 alone was 95 pages which would be quite costly to print.  Plus you would lose all of the cross linking that you get with the electronic edition.

They mentioned an open access period from launch (expected June, 2010) to August 31^st, 2010.  After the open access period, you will be able to get a 30-day free trial to test the RDA Toolkit before purchasing a license. One nice feature:  if you set up bookmarks and links during your trial you won’t lose them when you purchase a license.

For more information and to be added to an email list, email rdatoolkit@ala.org or visit http://www.rdaonline.org