Held in Washington, D.C., USA, November 3-7, 2014
The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) met at the American Library Association Washington Office, in Washington, D.C., USA, from November 3-7, 2014. James Hennelly, Managing Editor of RDA Toolkit, and Simon Edwards, chair of the Committee of Principals of RDA, attended the meeting as did Kate James, the RDA Examples Editor. Ten observers also attended public sessions of the meeting.
The JSC welcomed Galen Jones, the new representative from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and Ebe Kartus, the new representative from the Australian Committee on Cataloguing. Susanne Oehlschläger from Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) attended the meeting for Christine Frodl, the DNB representative to the JSC.
Galen’s attendance at the meeting was via an Internet connection with two-way audio and video connections, using GoToMeeting software.
The next meeting of the JSC is tentatively scheduled for the first week in November 2015 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
This report is a summary of the main outcomes of the JSC meeting. Further information about JSC’s activity and the development of RDA will be found in the annual report for 2014.
The JSC had extensive discussions with Simon Edwards, chair of the Committee of Principals, about that committee's RDA Governance Review.
Throughout the meeting there was ongoing consideration about the restructuring of RDA Toolkit, especially in the discussion related to 6JSC/BL/17 [Changes to Appendix D.0 and D.1.3.1] and 6JSC/LC/31 [Revisions to instructions on Parts of the Bible (6.23.2.9.2–6.23.2.9.5 and 6.23.2.9.7)]. The JSC will continue to explore these issues with the Co-Publishers.
The JSC discussed 47 proposals and discussion papers plus the responses to those documents. The documents represented a wide diversity of topics and included proposals from three JSC working groups: JSC Music Working Group, JSC RDA/ONIX Framework Working Group, and JSC Technical Working Group. Proposals were also submitted by the National Library of New Zealand (via the Chair) and by the ISSN Network.
Changes to RDA approved by the JSC during the meeting will appear in the April 2015 update of RDA Toolkit. The text of approved proposals will be issued as documents labeled as “Sec final” versions and posted on the JSC public website during January and February 2015. The Chair of JSC will respond to the non-JSC communities who submitted proposals and discussion papers. A table listing the JSC decisions/actions for all proposals and discussion papers will be posted on the website in January 2015. Some of the major decisions taken are summarized below under general topics.
Models:
Entities: Subject:
Internationalization:
Clarification, consistency, and efficiency:
Deborah Fritz, of The MARC of Quality, demonstrated recent changes to RIMMF (“RDA in Many Metadata Formats”), a visualization tool for seeing RDA content in a pure-RDA context. The JSC recognizes the importance of showing the utility of RDA outside the non-FRBR environment of MARC, and welcomed the availability of the tool.
The JSC received annual reports from its four working groups: JSC Music Working Group, JSC Places Working Group, JSC RDA/ONIX Framework Working Group, and JSC Technical Working Group. During the meeting, the JSC assigned new tasks to the JSC RDA/ONIX Framework Working Group and the JSC Technical Working Group.
The JSC will establish three new working groups: fictitious entities, content and coverage of RDA appendix A, and relationship designators. Collaboration on the topic of aggregates will be explored with the FRBR Consolidation Editorial Group.
Gordon Dunsire (Chair, JSC) is the liaison to the Committee of Principals of RDA. Gordon Dunsire and Judy Kuhagen (Secretary, JSC) are liaisons to two groups managed by ALA Publishing on behalf of the Co-Publishers: the RDA Development Team and the RDA Toolkit Technical Committee.
Other JSC liaisons are Alan Danskin to the European RDA Interest Group, Gordon Dunsire to the IFLA FRBR Review Group, and Christine Frodl to the IFLA ISBD Review Group. The JSC will explore establishing protocols between the JSC and the FRBR Review Group and between the JSC and the ISSN Network; there is already a protocol (6JSC/Chair/13) between the JSC and the ISBD Review Group. The JSC will continue to seek collaboration with similar groups responsible for the development and maintenance of bibliographic and other standards related to RDA.
The JSC intends to take an active role in setting the work agenda for RDA development, focusing attention on specific strategic issues and organizing their investigation by constituencies, working groups, or other interested parties.
Date posted: 2 December 2014
Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC), November 2014: