RDA Training in Canada Objectives

The vision of the RDA Training in Canada Working Group is to establish a network and infrastructure to support and sustain the development and delivery of a national RDA training program. To realize this vision, we propose 3 objectives:

1. Develop a practical and widely accessible training series.

2. Expand the existing network of RDA experts and trainers in Canada. This would be achieved through recruitment and mentorship of new trainers, to address training needs across diverse library communities in Canada, and to sustain training efforts nationally.

3. Establish and maintain an online, open access clearinghouse of training materials that is easily discoverable. The clearinghouse would permanently house content that can be used to deliver RDA training either within the national program, or customized by local communities to meet their own training needs.

More information on how we plan to achieve each objective will be outlined below.

To achieve Objective 1, “Develop a practical and widely accessible training series”:

Currently, RDA training in Canada relies solely on the resources and goodwill of individual volunteers.

The RDA Training in Canada Working Group proposes to establish itself as a national group that would develop a training series designed to demystify Official RDA through hands-on practice, enabling library professionals in Canada to:

• Understand and implement RDA guidelines effectively in their cataloguing workflows.

• Develop skills to create tailored RDA application profiles that meet local needs while adhering to national and international standards.

• Develop an initial set of national training materials that would incorporate or refer to existing training materials (for example, content offered by RSC, NARDAC, PCC, or other communities), and point to LC-PCC and Library and Archives Canada policy statements as appropriate.

• Ensure that training materials incorporate Canadian examples. Examples could include bilingual resources, multicultural content, Canadian authors, content that concurrently warrant the application of CSH or LAC classification extensions, or content that include Indigenous languages and scripts.

The development phase would see the national group:

• Collaborate with experienced practitioners and instructional designers to develop curriculum and training materials.

• Deliver the inaugural presentation of the training series, but make content openly available to others to reuse locally.

• Note: For the inaugural presentation of the training series, the data implementation environment is assumed to be MARC21, and the mode of workshop delivery is assumed to be online.

To achieve Objective 2, “Expand the existing network of RDA experts and trainers in Canada”:

The national group would seek to recruit and mentor new RDA trainers, especially from among the types of libraries and regions that are perceived to have less access to training. For instance, these may include:

• Libraries in rural, remote, or northern communities

• Small public libraries

• School libraries

Tasks to help achieve this objective could include:

• Outreach through provincial or regional networks

• Outreach to individual library institutions

• Online event(s) to launch or promote the group.

To achieve Objective 3, “Establish and maintain an online, open access clearinghouse of training materials that is easily discoverable”:

The clearinghouse would permanently house content that can be used, and reused, to deliver RDA training.

• The content would have been tested through the delivery of the inaugural national training series (see Objective 1).

• The content would be available for local communities to customize to their own training needs.

• Content that is intended for training would be made available in file formats that can be edited using common/mainstream applications.

• If video recordings are made for webinars in the training series, those recordings could potentially be housed in the clearinghouse.

• Approximately once a year, the RDA Training in Canada group will review the materials for currency and flag those that require updates. Information on how to contact or join the national group would be published as part of the landing page of the clearinghouse.