Bits and Pieces

The release date for RDA has been postponed causing some comments on the various e-mail discussion lists such as RDA = Release Delayed Again.

The most recent official notice says that RDA will be published in June 2010 and that pricing and purchasing information will be announced at the time of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, January15-18, 2010. Stay tuned.

There have been some updates to the catalogers pages on the CMRLS websites. They are revised whenever I learn of a new blog or site or organization. Links are removed if a blogger has not posted in a long time or a site appears to have been removed.

ACQWEB, a "gathering place for librarians and other professionals interested in acquisitions and collection development" has been added to the page Sites for Catalogers. ACQWEB has been around for many years, but has recently been redesigned and updated.

A new blog, Cataloging Thoughts, has been added to the Blogs page. Author Stephen Denney talks about his job at the University of California, Berkeley library. He explains his day-to-day responsibilities as a copy cataloger as if his audience is non-librarians - or at least non-tech services librarians. It's a very different perspective from most cataloging blogs and I like it.

How to Catalog a Hiccup has the totally opposite perspective and is aimed at experienced catalogers. Suzie DeGrasse Pocataligo chronicles her "independent study on cataloging ephemera (art, sound, people, smells, hiccups, etc.)" and only an experienced cataloger would have any idea what she's talking about. While unusual media are outnumbered by the plain old book, they take an inordinate amoun of a cataloger's time because they are unusual and we don't have lots of practice with them. In one of her earlier posts, Suzie actually supplies a MARC record for a hiccup. A more recent post is a CDWA record for a hiccup.

Next step: update my blogroll.