For those of you interested in following the progress of the new RDA (Resource Description and Access) standard, the following update was recently posted on the RDA discussion list by Deirdre Kiorgaard, the representative of the Australian Committee on Cataloguing to the Joint Steering Committee for the development of RDA:
“The RDA toolkit will be published in June 2010. … Over a period of 9 months after RDA is released, US libraries will be conducting testing of RDA. Information about this testing is in the RDA FAQ http://www.rda-jsc.org/rdafaq.html#11 and also on the testing website http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/.
Implementation in Australian and overseas libraries is expected in mid 2011. Internationally, the National Library of Australia is working with the Library of Congress, British Library, and Library and Archives Canada to develop implementation strategies and coordinate implementation dates. Within Australia, the Australian Committee on Cataloguing is preparing a plan for implementation and training.”
You can join the RDA discussion list from the NLA’s email discussion lists page, or view our earlier post on RDA here. Ann Chapman has also published an excellent introduction to RDA in the information science journal, Ariadne, the full text of which is freely available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue49/chapman/.