Dear RDA catalogers,
This message is to alert you to some information about RDA on these topics:
Topic 1. Interim treatment of "Treaties" under RDA
Topic 2. Reminder on formulating the preferred name and authorized access point for some types of conferences
Topic 3. A typo in an RDA example that has the potential to confuse
Topic 1: Interim treatment of "Treaties" under RDA. Based on a request from the American Association of Law Libraries, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) has approved an interim exception to the treatment of authorized access points for treaties under RDA. The legal community is re-evaluating how authorized access points for treaties should be constructed under RDA, and has proposed some major changes to RDA that will be discussed by the Joint Steering Committee at its November meeting. To avoid disruption within the existing NACO file and related bibliographic maintenance until RDA itself is changed, the following guidelines for new and existing authorized access points should be observed until a final solution has been determined:
New authorized access points for treaties: If no authorized access point exists for a treaty, continue to use AACR2 instructions (AACR2 25.16 Treaties, etc., and 21.35 Treaties, Intergovernmental agreements, etc.) to establish the authorized form, except, use the full form of the name of a month when necessary to record a date a treaty was signed instead of the abbreviations from AACR2. Code any new authority record as AACR2 in 008/10 (Descriptive Cataloging Rules) as an exception to the PCC Post RDA Test Guidelines.
Existing authorized access points for treaties (AACR2): Do not revise an existing AACR2 authorized access point in a name authority record for a treaty to the RDA form, continue to use the AACR2 form in RDA bibliographic records.
Existing authorized access points for treaties (RDA): Do not revise an existing RDA authorized access point in a name authority record for a treaty back to AACR2, continue to use the RDA form in bibliographic records.
These exceptions for treaties are also found in the PCC Post RDA Test Guidelines at
Topic 2: Reminder on formulating the preferred name and authorized access points for conferences.
A reminder that under RDA, a date that might appear with the name of a conference that is an initialsm or acronym is *not* included as part of the preferred name for the conference- the date is only used as an addition to the authorized access point for the conference ($d in the X11). From RDA
11.2.2.11: "
Omit from the name of a conference, etc., indications of its number, or year or years of convocation, etc. Apply this instruction to the name of a congress, meeting, exhibition, fair, festival, etc. …"
This was a change from how we treated such conferences under the LCRIs for AACR2.
Examples:
Under AACR2/LCRI: CDVE 2011 $d (2011 : $c Hong Kong, China)
Treatment under RDA: CDVE (Conference) $n (8th : $d 2011 : $c Hong Kong, China)
Under AACR2/LCRI: ICT-GLOW 2011 $d (2011 : $c Toulouse, France)
Treatment under RDA: ICT-GLOW (Conference) $n (1st : $d 2011 : $c Toulouse, France)
(Note that under RDA/LC-PCC PS policies, it is now possible to create separate authorities coexisting in the LC/NACO authority file for the "collective" ongoing conference and for individual instances of it, which was not permitted under AACR2/LCRI. Note also that the term "(Conference)" or similar term is added to preferred name for a conference that is an initialism or acronym in order to convey the idea of a corporate body per LC-PCC PS 11.7.1.4 )
Topic 3. A typo in RDA example that has the potential to confuse
Several have noted an unfortunate editing mistake in an example at RDA 9.19.1.6 showing an authorized access point using the new RDA element "Other term of rank, honour or office"-- it will be corrected in the next release (November) of the RDA Toolkit
Wood, Captain, John
should be
Wood, John, Captain
Please don't follow this example!
[Source: Library of Congress]
MARC Code List for Relators [Also Valid as Relationship Designator in Resource Description and Access (RDA) Cataloging]
