Cataloging:

People categorize things everyday, whether they know it or not. We organize objects certain ways and put things in certain order. The library is no different. There are systems like Library of Congress Classification (LC) and Dewey Decimal (DDC). There are even more systems for example SuDoc, which is used to classify federal documents. To make things easier for catalogers there are rules and regulations in place to help catalog items in order to make such as RDA and FRBR. These types of rules are put in place in order to assist the patron in finding any information needs they may have.

RDA: Resource Description and Access, this is the newest set of cataloging rules implemented in 2013. RDA provides guidelines on how to record data which will support “resource discovery” according to the RDA Toolkit. It is a code used to assist in creating guidelines and standards in cataloging. There are three new fields introduced under RDA, 336 ‡a text ‡2 rdacontent, 337 ‡a unmediated ‡2 rdamedia, and 338 ‡a volume ‡2 rdacarrier. RDA also expresses the principles of FRBR and FRAD, and uses ISBD.

FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, FRBR talks about three types of entities. Group one is the “WEMI” entities: Works, Expressions, Manifestations, and Items. Group 2 is the person or organization who are owners, and responsible for a work’s creation. Group three is subjects. According to Professor Bolin, FRBR expresses the connections and relationships between works and other expressions of those works.

FRAD: Functional Requirements for Authority Data, this involves the requirements involving authority. Authority data expresses the person, organization, or topic responsible for the item being cataloged.

ISBD: International Standard for Bibliographic Description has one major standard: “prescribed punctuation”. According to Professor Bolin “It is the “space colon space,” “space slash space” that you will see if you look at some bibliographic records. The goal of ISBD was machine recognition of data” (p. 09).

All of these “entities” so to say fit together. They can be seen through RDA, which embodies all others. As I stated under RDA, it expresses the principles of FRBR and FRAD, and uses ISBD. These are important because they are the foundation of how users search and find information. These standards assist in optimizing user searchability and findability. When the relationships are expressed as suggested by FRBR and FRAD it makes searching much easier for users.