UCL RDA Basic Policy

Owned by Thomas Meehan
Dec 16, 2015
3 min read

This document is intended to convey any UCL RDA policies not contained in any other more specific policy or workflow documents.

Outline of UCL's RDA Policy

UCL aims to follow as much as possible the RDA practices and policies outlined in the Cambridge Standard Record (CSR), the Cambridge Monograph Workflow on RDA Toolkit (Cambridge Workflow), and RDA itself. Generally, specific UCL policies take precedence over Cambridge ones, which themselves take precedence over basic RDA rules, subject to the sensible dictates of judgement. UCL also aims to keep its policies to a minimum and will normally only formulate its own policies when needed for clarity, where existing rules or policies are lacking, or as part of general guidance for material types.

There is no intention that they any policies will be totally comprehensive.  All policies should be considered subject to frequent change.

Comments and questions should be addressed to Thomas Meehan.

When to use RDA

RDA is the new standard for cataloguing and will eventually replace AACR2. It is important that UCL moves in the direction of implementing RDA as much as possible. However, given the necessarily hybrid character of our existing data and records that we acquire from elsewhere, as well as the need to formulate policies for certain types or material, it will not be possible to catalogue exclusively in RDA for some time. Below are some guidelines for when a record should be completed in RDA or AACR2. These apply to UCL cataloguers who have been trained in RDA.

In general, prefer RDA but make decisions on pragmatic grounds subject to the following guidelines for various types of material and situations. These guidelines will change over time: in particular the emphasis will shift towards making RDA the norm.

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Monographs

Catalogue monographs in either RDA or AACR2 depending on the type of monograph and the record you are faced with. Highly specialist types of monograph with significant complications in RDA practice can be catalogued in AACR2 if there are no specific UCL guidelines for them. There are now individual guidelines covering Compilations and Collaborations and Exhibition Catalogues (see separate UCL workflows). Rare books should be catalogued in AACR2 pending specific guidelines.

Monographs (scratch records). Catalogue in RDA.

Monographs (records in AACR2). If the data is generally correct, leave as AACR2; if a lot of editing is required anyway, convert to RDA.

Monographs (records in RDA). Catalogue in RDA. If a record is in RDA, the data is correct, but some policy decisions vary from those of UCL, only amend if the findability of the item or the integrity of the headings indexes would be adversely affected.

Monographs (hybrid). Make a practical judgement whether to make the record RDA based on the state of the record itself. In general, prefer making a record complete RDA but if the RDA elements present in a record are clearly superficial (e.g. just some 33x fields added automatically), consider changing it to AACR2.

Other materials

DVDs and Videos. Catalogue in AACR2.

Ebooks (assuming records supplied by publisher etc). Accept RDA or AACR2 as given, including hybrid records, although default to AACR2 for ebook-specific data until policies have been decided for cataloguing ebooks in RDA.

Rare books. Catalogue in AACR2.

Serials. Catalogue in AACR2.

Other (kits, CD-ROMS, LPs, etc, etc.). Catalogue in AACR2.