SCIS RDA implementation 1 July 2013

SCIS, along with the library world globally, is implementing the new Resource Description and Access (RDA) cataloguing standards – the first major change to take place since the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, second edition (AACR2) were released in 1978.

SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry 2013 edition

The standards that govern SCIS cataloguing have been rewritten and the new 2013 edition has now been published. This extensive document available as a PDF download from the SCIS Help page, is written for SCIS cataloguing staff and runs to 209 pages. The sections most affected by RDA include:
Section 2: Descriptive cataloguing
Section 5: Standards for specific formats, and
Section 6: MARC coding: Bibliographic records

Cake toasting the launch of RDA and RDA Toolkit
Celebrating the launch of RDA at ALA10
CC-by-nc-sa

SCIS cataloguers will commence using these standards on 1 July 2013.
SCIS major decisions

SCIS has consulted with library system providers in Australian and New Zealand school libraries and has decided to move slowly towards full RDA implementation. From 1 July 2013 – 1 July 2014 SCIS will produce hybrid RDA records which continue to use the GMD from AACR2, and which will also retain the 260 Publication field rather than the new 264 field: Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice, used by most systems using RDA.

RDA test records

The following records have been added to SCIS so library system providers and SCIS subscribers can test any impact of the change in standards on their systems.

Please note that ISBNs have been removed from these records so they are not accidentally retrieved through SCISWeb or Z39.50. Normal SCIS records will continue to include the ISBN where available.

Title Type of resource Hybrid RDA test
Pure RDA test
Chasing the light : a novel of Antarctica book, fiction 1614792 1614815
Saint Paul’s letters to the Corinthians in the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate book, nonfiction 1614767 1585707
Eraserhead video recording, DVD 1614751 1588961
Desire musical sound recording, CD 1614750 1588970
The call of the wild audiobook, online 1614737 1607780
100 healthy desserts e-book, online 1614769 1581096
Home of the Australian Women Writers Challenge website 1614785 1614812

Background on RDA

For a review of what RDA is, and why it is being implemented revisit this compilation of previous Connections articles and blog posts.

In Connections 83 (October 2012) we published an article by Renate Beilharz from Box Hill Institute entitled: Why new rules, and what’s it got to do with me?
Issue 84 explained How SCIS will implement RDA, and Issue 85 provided more detail on how RDA deals with media types.

As part of the SCIS consultation on 4 December 2012 Renate also provided an introduction to RDA and its benefits for education libraries.

More information about RDA is available on the website of the Australian Committee on Cataloging.

http://www.slideshare.net/scis/rda-in-scis

Highlights of Connections 85

You can now read the latest issue of Connections at the SCIS website.

Digital Citizenship

Judith Way discusses why she saw the need for a digital citizenship blog which reached out to all sectors of her school community.  She felt that many students and parents, even if adept at using digital technology and social media, were often unaware of the implications of their digital footprint.  She resolved to  promote the responsible use of social media and the internet.

Kew High School's cybersafety/digital citizenship blog. Printed here with permission
Kew High School’s cybersafety/digital citizenship blog. Printed here with permission

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using archetypes to match learning spaces with physical and digital spaces

Bianca Hewes looks at the traditional classroom and wonders why in a changing world, it remains unchanged despite the creation of virtual learning spaces.  She  examines the work of Prof. David D Thornburg who identifies four ‘archetypal learning spaces: Campfire, Watering hole, Cave and Life.

The Annual Report

Dianne McKenzie discusses how the annual report can be a record of a year’s planning and activity, allowing the Librarian to showcase the diverse roles and activities of the Library.  She emphasizes the importance of documenting and collecting data

SCIS is more: E-book and RDA updates

Meet our new Cataloging Team Leader Soula Kipos, and find out more about SCIS records for e-books and the introduction of the cataloguing standard: Resource Description and Access (RDA).

All about ANZAC

Anzac Day, 25 April is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand honouring the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli during World War One.

Anzac Day Subject headings
SCIS Subject Headings List structure for ANZAC

You can find out more on the ANZAC story from New Zealand History Online [SCIS 1594434] and from Australian Stories [SCIS 1030033] on the Australian Government site.  The National Library of New Zealand Services to Schools page has an introduction to Anzac Day [SCIS 1525095], as well as a wonderful gallery of primary sources [SCIS 1547997] under the Culture and heritage page.

Australian schools can search Scootle for ANZAC resources and teaching ideas. New Zealand schools can find ANZAC resources on TKI.

The National Library of Australia’s Trove provides links to digitised newspapers which you can search by State and newspaper title, and their picture library has a wealth of images. See Papers Past for New Zealand newspaper search.

There is more information at the Australian War Memorial in The Anzac day tradition and from the Australian Army website. Some other great resources on Anzac Day can be found on the ABC, from Many Answers as well as on Scoop.it!.

ANZAC biscuits
by Phil Cummings

Plans are underway to mark the 100 years since World War One with an Anzac Centenary 2014-2018.

To search for further ANZAC resources in SCIS select a subject search using one of the SCIS subject headings above [SCIS login required].

Our favourite recent addition to SCIS with an ANZAC subject heading is the beautiful picture book Anzac biscuits by Phil Cummings and illustrated by Owen Swan [SCIS 1598353].

Highlights of Connections 84

You can now read the latest issue of Connections at the SCIS website.

GR8 Debate digital culture is killing reading

The GR8 debate was organized in celebration of the National Year of Reading and explored how digital technologies such as iPads, social media and the instant internet culture impact upon our core, traditional abilities and views of reading and writing. Both sides battled it out with a diverse array of serious and humorous academic arguments

Banned Books Week 2012 at Sunshine College

How Sunshine College celebrated Book week by looking at banned books

“The students were shocked that their favourite books had not been allowed in some places, including their much-loved year 10 class text, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Suddenly, they could feel deliciously naughty while defending freedom of speech. They raided the shelves to find their favourite banned or challenged books. They then decided which passages to read, discussing, arguing, and testing them on each other.”

Creating displays part 2: the practical side

Anita Vandenberghe in her previous article talked about the philosophy of displays – what is the story behind it? Why should we have displays and would people even notice them?  In this issue she highlights the practical side of display. Where to start, what topic to choose, where to get ideas, what material to use and how to prepare yourself?

Collective knowledge construction: four new strategies for learning

How to Connect, Communicate and Collaborate in order to learn Collectively.

QR codes, linking print and online collections

An interesting summarized exploration of how to create meaningful two-way links between the libraries online and print collections.

2013

Welcome to 2013 and the Lunar New Year in the Chinese Year of the Snake.

‘The Snake is the sixth sign of the Chinese Zodiac, which consists of 12 Animal Signs. It is the enigmatic, intuitive, introspective, refined and collected of the Animals Signs. Ancient Chinese wisdom says a Snake in the house is a good omen because it means that your family will not starve.’

The United Nations has declared 2013 the International Year of Water Cooperation (SCIS no.  1582371) as well as the International Year of Quinoa (SCIS no. 1592685)

In the world of colour AkzoNobel declares Indigo  (SCIS no. 1592774)  is a striking statement colour for 2013 associated with wisdom and honesty which enhances your environment.  However Pantone Color of the year 2013 is Emerald Green (SCIS no. 1592779)

2013 is also the International Year of Statistics,  (SCIS no. 1592783) a worldwide event supported by more than 1,400 organizations. More than 100 scientific societies, universities, research institutes, and organizations all over the world have banded together to dedicate 2013 as a special year for the Mathematics of Planet Earth. (SCIS no. 1592783)

The European Commission has designated that 2013 will be the European Year of Citizens (SCIS no. 1592791) while Scotland has declared 2013 the Year of Natural Scotland (SCIS no. 1592797)

Pope Benedict XVI declared that a Year of Faith (SCIS  no. 1592806) will begin on October 11, 2012 and conclude on November 24, 2013.  World Youth Day 2013 (SCIS no. 1592887) to be held in Rio theme is… ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’

For International Women’s day March 8 2013 the theme is The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum (SCIS no. 1592879)

Red Quinoa by  Pru MItchell
Red Quinoa by Pru MItchell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can find more pictures  here from the Global Year of Quinoa

Splash Teacher Collections

ABC Splash is not just a series of video clips to use with your students.  Check out the Teachers Area (SCIS no: 1592621) with its four teachers collections which feature areas of focus, topics and assessment tasks with links to videos and other teaching resources both within the collection or online.

Genetically engineered crops: SCIS no: 1592621

Improving your writing English: SCIS no: 1592630

From paddock to plate: SCIS no: 1592635

Finding scientific solutions: SCIS no: 1592636

 

SCIS asks: ScOT and subject access

In the subject access session of the SCIS consultation on 4 December 2012, Les Kneebone Project Manager of the Schools Online Thesaurus (ScOT) presented an exciting overview of recent developments in the ScOT thesaurus. Key features that position ScOT for the future include:

  • its ongoing development with input from cataloguers, curriculum developers, subject matter experts and users
  • its use to describe the machine-readable Australian Curriculum
  • its linked data API facilitating automatic semantic relationships
  • its translation into languages including Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Māori
  • its use to describe a wide range of resources through the National Digital Learning Resource Network and SCIS

Discussion followed as to future directions for SCIS in the area of subject access.

Les Kneebone
Les Kneebone presents an overview of ScOT

The ScOT in SCIS project commenced in 2006 when the thinking was that keyword searching would become the pre-eminent means of resource retrieval. Since then SCIS has offered schools the option of downloading both SCIS Subject Headings and ScOT terms in their catalogue records. The challenge is how to manage and display both SCIS subject headings and ScOT terms in a meaningful way for users in order to exploit the inferred links between resources tagged with ScOT terms that match a curriculum tagged with ScOT terms.

Also discussed was an alternative scenario of transition from use of SCIS Subject Headings to ScOT terms and how schools would manage this process.

SCIS asks: Strategic directions for school libraries

On Tuesday 4 December 2012 SCIS conducted a consultation workshop with SCIS partners discussing future priorities in our support for school libraries.

Judy O’Connell, Course Director (Teacher Librarianship) at Charles Sturt University started the day with a set of challenges that covered collections, search, cataloguing, curriculum, interoperability and access. Her presentation Strategic directions for school libraries reinforced the context within which education libraries need to work.  These included curriculum, the cloud and game-based learning in a library environment which is both physical and virtual.Bulb image from presentation

The challenge to participants was to rethink library catalogues, which should no longer be seen as simply tools for locating records. Interrogation of data from different data pools requires new thinking and a new user focus.  We need to change our technology interface to provide a natural, predictive and responsive search capacity.  Web 3.0 challenges us to make library search into a discovery interface.

“How does search impact the way students think, and the way we organise information access?”

Judy pointed out that the search experience influences how students see information structure. Students conceptualise information and the search environment differently, and the way they search should influence the way that we organise information. The learning technologies environment has changed since library management systems were first designed, and we must not lose sight of what is happening in other areas of information retrieval. The importance of metadata developments, including Resource Description and Access (RDA), mean we cannot take old thinking into new information environments.

Check out Judy’s presentation, and then contribute to the ongoing discussion about how SCIS and library system providers can best serve school libraries in 2015 and beyond?

SCIS asks – Resource Description and Access (RDA)

As part of the SCIS consultation on 4 December 2012 Renate Beilharz from Box Hill Institute provided an introduction to Resource Description and Access (RDA)  and its benefits for education libraries.

The Statement of purpose for RDA states:

Renate talks about RDA
Renate talks about RDA

RDA will be a new standard for resource description and access, designed for the digital world.
Built on foundations established by the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), RDA will provide a comprehensive set of guidelines and instructions on resource description and access covering all types of content and media.
RDA will enable users of library catalogues and other systems of information organization to find, identify, select, and obtain resources appropriate to their information needs.

During the period of RDA development, the library and cataloguing world updated some key cataloguing principles and developed some conceptual models for resource discovery. RDA is built on these new conceptual models.

If we remember that the highest principle of the International Cataloguing Principles is the ‘convenience of the user’ RDA has aligned with the ICP principles: find, identify, select, obtain.  Through  RDA we can practise what we preach and work to improve search results and the way these results are displayed. RDA is very much about the user and functionality; focused on users – not items.

The RDA cataloguing standard is designed precisely for an online environment. RDA’s element set has been clearly defined, and incorporated into the Open Metadata Registry, which is a set of RDF-based controlled vocabularies, and a fundamental piece of technical infrastructure for the Semantic Web.

Renate’s overview led into a presentation by SCIS Cataloguing Team Leader, Pam Kadow, outlining proposed changes to the SCIS Standards for Cataloguing and Data Entry for alignment with RDA commencing the second quarter of 2013.

ABC Splash

ABC Splash is now live at splash.abc.net.au

This is the first release of ABC Splash which currently contains video resources, learning objects and a sample of teacher resources and featured collections presented as e-books.

This is an exciting partnership  between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia who are picking content from the ABC archives and contemporary shows to help teachers plan for the Australian Curriculum.  All the resources on the site are free to watch and can be accessed from home or from school

The following featured collections have a variety of resources for teaching and learning

Earthquakes: when the Earth shakes   SCIS No: 1592751

Upper primary: Year 6 | Secondary: Years 7, 8

Palaeontology: Unlocking secrets of the past   SCIS No: 1592754

Upper primary: Years 5, 6 | Secondary: Years 7, 8

From fossils to fuels   SCIS No: 1592762

Upper primary: Year 6 | Secondary: Years 7, 8

The evolution of the Australian family home   SCIS No: 1592758

Secondary: Years 9, 10

Democracies in action   SCIS No: 1592763

Secondary: Years 9, 10

Rights and freedoms   SCIS No: 1592765

Secondary: Years 10

Renewable energy   SCIS No: 1592769

Secondary: Years 9, 10

Great Barrier Reef: Under Threat   SCIS No: 15927568

Upper primary: Years 5, 6 | Secondary: Years 7, 8

Great Barrier Reef: Under Threat
Great Barrier Reef: Under Threat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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