On March 16 I gave a presentation at COSUGI’s annual conference in Salt Lake City on “Getting Ready for RDA.”  It is an update, with less Illinois emphasis and some more specific SirsiDynix references, of last October’s “Wait a Minute, How Many Months”?; I’m attaching PDFs in case anyone might be interested in the newer information.  After editing my speaker’s notes a little I will post them as well.

One thing I emphasized in the presentation more than in the posted material is that preparation for RDA involves a lot of policy planning, much of which will probably be done while you’re learning about the code. Among other things this is an occasion for examining and rethinking your library’s or consortium’s existing policies.

And corollary to that: As you make these decisions, it is very important to document, not only the decisions themselves, but the reasons for them. Eventually someone after you will be revisiting the issues you’re dealing with now, quite possibly someone who will not have been around for these initial discussions. They will appreciate knowing the context in which you established your policies and practices, which they can use in evaluating what they should do at that undetermined point in the future. And in fact you and your colleagues may well be returning to these questions yourselves; and it can be helpful, when re-evaluating what you’ve done, to have an answer to the question–literally–”What were we thinking?”

getting_ready_for_rda

Some RDA Training Resources 2013-02-14

UPDATE: Speaker’s notes:

Getting Ready for RDA notes for posting 2013-03-25