Monday 8 February 2010

RDA?

RDA. Now there's a standard! The year I entered university to study librarianship, was a big one! Not because I was studying to become a librarian, but because 1978 saw the release of AACR (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules). So, there was a new standard, and we were new, enthusiastic students, eager to learn, and so absorbed AACR as though it were water and we were sponges.

Actually, truth to tell, I probably didn't know it was new and revloutionary until about 1984 when I was cataloguing books for a special library who had no idea about cataloguing standards, so were keen to use my knowledge of AACR.

Since that time, of course, I've spent many a happy year using AACR and its updates, and am intimately familiar with most of it! Now, though, I find that after 32 years of AACR there is going to be a new standard released, and I am going to have to change the habits of a lifetime!

So this is what the last three or four years have been about. I've been playing with blogs and wikis, with Yammer and Twitter, recently joined Facebook and linkedin, getting used to changing the way I do things, so that when RDA is finally released it will just be one more new thing for me to learn, not the major obstacle that it could be.

At least, that's what I'm currently thinking ...