John Chapman: August 2009 Archives
The publication of Resource Description and Access (RDA) is imminent. The standard is planned for formal release later this year. Owing to the important role OCLC services take in descriptive workflow in libraries, we have heard many questions about OCLC's involvement in the standard's development and testing.
Last month, at the American Library Association's Annual Meeting in Chicago, Ted Fons gave a presentation entitled Beyond the Record: OCLC and the Future of MARC.* I wanted to call attention to two slides within that wide-ranging presentation that are a succinct digest of that involvement. The first slide indicates external activities:
In the presentation, Ted notes ways in which OCLC has already moved beyond MARC record structures. Our work with a hub-and-spoke metadata crosswalking scheme and with modeling FRBR work sets, has informed our ability to absorb new formats and metadata standards. It has also directly informed our thinking about entities and relationships, most notably in WorldCat Identities. This work allows us to offer the features and functionality necessary to respond to the needs of our member libraries as they begin to test and use RDA.
For a fuller description of OCLC's RDA-related activities, please see Glenn Patton's authoritative statement, available here: http://www.oclc.org/news/announcements/announcement386.htm.
In addition, Karen Calhoun is organizing an OCLC webinar on the topic of OCLC and RDA to be offered sometime in the fall. Anyone may register and attend. Please watch for an announcement on the OCLC webinar page at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/websessions/default.htm.
*Ted Fons' full presentation, which also discusses OCLC metadata crosswalking, and FRBR works, is available from ALA via: http://tinyurl.com/FonsMARC
Last month, at the American Library Association's Annual Meeting in Chicago, Ted Fons gave a presentation entitled Beyond the Record: OCLC and the Future of MARC.* I wanted to call attention to two slides within that wide-ranging presentation that are a succinct digest of that involvement. The first slide indicates external activities:
- Committee Contribution:
- ex-officio membership in the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access
- MARC Advisory Committee
- Staff Participation:
- Joint Steering Committee's two RDA Examples Groups
- RDA/MARC Working Group
- Representation on ALA ALCTS RDA Implementation Task Force
- Various program sessions
- OCLC Internal Activities:
- Discussions with the three U.S. national libraries to plan for the testing/evaluation period (late 2009)
- Planning for MARC21 format changes to support the testing/evaluation period
- OCLC Contract Services to staff have been selected to participate in the testing/evaluation period.
In the presentation, Ted notes ways in which OCLC has already moved beyond MARC record structures. Our work with a hub-and-spoke metadata crosswalking scheme and with modeling FRBR work sets, has informed our ability to absorb new formats and metadata standards. It has also directly informed our thinking about entities and relationships, most notably in WorldCat Identities. This work allows us to offer the features and functionality necessary to respond to the needs of our member libraries as they begin to test and use RDA.
For a fuller description of OCLC's RDA-related activities, please see Glenn Patton's authoritative statement, available here: http://www.oclc.org/news/announcements/announcement386.htm.
In addition, Karen Calhoun is organizing an OCLC webinar on the topic of OCLC and RDA to be offered sometime in the fall. Anyone may register and attend. Please watch for an announcement on the OCLC webinar page at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/websessions/default.htm.
*Ted Fons' full presentation, which also discusses OCLC metadata crosswalking, and FRBR works, is available from ALA via: http://tinyurl.com/FonsMARC
