Now available for purchase on the ALA Store website, Introduction to RDA: A Guide to the Basics after 3R, Second Edition is Christine Oliver’s primer guide to the RDA cataloging standard for library and information science students, records managers, catalogers, and other library professionals.  The new print book specifically covers the changes to RDA reflected in the official RDA Toolkit launched on 15 December 2021. ALA Digital Reference interviewed Christine Oliver about the revised RDA and resources that catalogers can use to build their command of it.  Read the complete interview.

The International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) Review Group is announcing the release of the Update 2021 to the 2011 ISBD Consolidated Edition as a draft, awaiting an official publication early 2022. The developments made in this update extend the coverage of ISBD to a larger array of resources, optimize its ability for granular description, clarify and develop some of the elements, and bring more organization and refinements into the description of some types of resources.

The Library of Congress has been exploring ways to include ISNI in its Cataloging in Publication (CIP) records. In August 2021, the optional inclusion of ISNI for personal names was implemented. The CIP submission portal, PrePub BookLink, has been enhanced to enable publishers to supply ISNI for personal names as part of requesting CIP cataloging for their forthcoming books. CIP Program staff add the ISNI to the name authority record in the LC Name Authority File; they have added ISNI for 108 personal names to date. The project team is working next on automating the inclusion of ISNI in the bibliographic and authority records in the MARC 024 field.

See page 9 of Library of Congress Update for ALA LibLearnX, January 20, 2022

In December 2021 and January 2022, the American Library Association offered free RDA Toolkit demos in the French and Spanish languages respectively. Each demo featured an overview of RDA Toolkit’s features and functionality. Demos were recorded and posted to ALA YouTube channel for viewing at your convenience.

The PCC Policy Committee has decided that the PCC will not implement the Official (new) RDA Toolkit before October 2022. The reason for the added delay is that the site migration of the RDA Toolkit, including original RDA, has impacted the expected update schedule. Once these updates have been made, PCC is planning on conducting a testing period, beginning sometime in March or April of 2022. More information on this test will be coming soon. In the meantime, the PCC will continue to catalog using the Original RDA Toolkit.

Responding to interest in the library community and beyond, ISNI-International Agency is now making available key ISNI metadata in several Linked Data formats. The metadata covers assigned ISNI identifiers themselves and a subset of the associated information describing each one in the ISNI database. You can find more detailed information.

The persistent identifier systems (Persistent Identifiers, PIDs) such as Handle, DOI, ORCID and ROR that are currently used frequently in scientific publishing, have fundamental problems with regard to data security, data protection and ensuring data integrity due to their centralization. A possible solution to this is the system of DIDs: a new form of globally unique identifiers that can be generated by each individual or organization and operated on any platform that is considered trustworthy. At the end of the paper, the author presents five previously worked out requirements in relation to a contemporary implementation of persistent identifiers.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced the publication of its Recommended Practice, NISO RP-38-2021, Content Platform Migrations, which provides guidance to improve processes and communication between all parties, with suggested steps involved before, during, and after the migration of content from one platform to another. This new Recommended Practice, developed by the librarians, publishers, and content platform providers on the Content Platform Migrations Working Group, intends to streamline the process and clarify the communications needed to ensure seamless transitions. The final version incorporates feedback received from the wider community during the public comment period earlier in 2021.

In this Forum held during the ALA Annual Virtual Meeting, the Library of Congress reported on its progress toward BIBFRAME 100. Stanford reported progress on the community level and provided exciting news about a BIBFRAME data pool – cooperatively created by the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), OCLC and ShareVDE. The PCC is also starting to look at important aspects of data exchange in this new BIBFRAME environment. With several large implementations of BIBFRAME now having extensive experience, the BIBFRAME ontology is being adjusted based on this experience.

• Recording of the BIBFRAME June 28 presentation (63 minutes)

The presentations are accessible here.

Did you know that organizational ISNIs can now be deposited as part of DOI affiliation metadata? Ringgold provides ISNIs for all records in the Identify Database, the authoritative reference database curated by Ringgold that serves the scholarly, academic, and research fields. The Identify Database contains almost 600,000 organizations in all countries and sectors. Related organizations are linked together, such as universities and their departments, or corporate entities with subsidiary firms or divisions. Ringgold hierarchies are key to understanding complex relationships and the wider market.