Resource Description and Access ( RDA ) is a standard for descriptive cataloging initially released in June 2010, providing instructions and guidelines on formulating bibliographic data . Intended for use by libraries and other cultural organizations such as museums and archives, RDA is the successor to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules , Second Edition (AACR2).
54-915: RDA emerged from the International Conference on the Principles & Future Development of AACR held in Toronto in 1997. It is published jointly by the American Library Association , the Canadian Federation of Library Associations , and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in the United Kingdom. Maintenance of RDA is the responsibility of the RDA Steering Committee (RSC). As of 2015, RSC
108-475: A historically black college or university . She also was president during COVID-19 and the live annual conference was cancelled and delivered virtually. Brown characterized her presidency as one of "change, loss, and hope." In 2021, Patty Wong became the first Asian-American president of the ALA. In 2022 Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada was the first Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander American president. In 2023
162-856: A call for a "Convention of Librarians" to be held October 4–6, 1876, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania . IL At the end of the meeting, according to Edward G. Holley in his essay "ALA at 100", "the register was passed around for all to sign who wished to become charter members", making October 6, 1876, the date of the ALA's founding. Among the 103 librarians in attendance were Justin Winsor ( Boston Public Library and Harvard University ), William Frederick Poole ( Chicago Public Library and Newberry College ), Charles Ammi Cutter ( Boston Athenæum ), Melvil Dewey , Charles Evans ( Indianapolis Public Library ) and Richard Rogers Bowker . Attendees came from as far west as Chicago and from England. The ALA
216-466: A cataloger places in each MARC field is usually governed and defined by standards outside of MARC, except for a handful of fixed fields defined by the MARC standards themselves. Resource Description and Access , for example, defines how the physical characteristics of books and other items should be expressed. The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are a list of authorized subject terms used to describe
270-668: A group of librarians proposed that the ALA schedule a new round table program discussion on the social responsibilities of librarians at its annual conference in Kansas City . This group called themselves the Organizing Committee for the ALA Round Table on Social Responsibilities of Libraries. This group drew in many other under-represented groups in the ALA who lacked power, including the Congress for Change in 1969. This formation of
324-719: A permanent committee – Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The ALA made revisions to strengthen the Library Bill of Rights in June 1948, approved the Statement on Labeling in 1951 to discourage labeling material as subversive, and adopted the Freedom to Read Statement and the Overseas Library Statement in 1953. The ALA has worked throughout its history to define, extend, protect and advocate for equity of access to information. In 1945
378-645: A single file. MARC uses the ISO 2709 standard to define the structure of each record. This includes a marker to indicate where each record begins and ends, as well as a set of characters at the beginning of each record that provide a directory for locating the fields and subfields within the record. In 2002, the Library of Congress developed the MARCXML schema as an alternative record structure, allowing MARC records to be represented in XML ;
432-627: A special issue of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly . American Library Association The American Library Association ( ALA ) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. During the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, 103 librarians, 90 men and 13 women, responded to
486-574: A standard against censorship and was adopted by the ALA in 1939. This has been recognized as the moment defining modern librarianship as a profession committed to intellectual freedom and the right to read. ALA appointed a committee to study censorship and recommend policy after the banning of the novel The Grapes of Wrath in Kern County , California and the implementation of the Library Bill of Rights. The committee reported in 1940 that intellectual freedom and professionalism were linked and recommended
540-402: A time when the publishing world has little diversity. Works from authors and illustrators of color make up less than 8 percent of children's titles produced in 2013. The ALA hopes this regrettable incident will be used to open a dialogue on the need for diversity in the publishing industry, particularly in regards to books for young people." In 2020 Wanda Kay Brown was the first president from
594-400: Is MARC, so that bibliographic information can be shared freely between computers. The structure of bibliographic records almost universally follows the MARC standard. Other standards work in conjunction with MARC, for example, Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR)/ Resource Description and Access (RDA) provide guidelines on formulating bibliographic data into the MARC record structure, while
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#1732851924430648-608: Is based on ISO 2022 and allows the use of Hebrew, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, and East Asian scripts. MARC 21 in UTF-8 format allows all the languages supported by Unicode. MARCXML is an XML schema based on the common MARC 21 standards. MARCXML was developed by the Library of Congress and adopted by it and others as a means of facilitating the sharing of, and networked access to, bibliographic information. Being easy to parse by various systems allows it to be used as an aggregation format, as it
702-545: Is currently being translated into these languages as well as others including Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Swedish, and Vietnamese. In March 2012 the Library of Congress announced that it would fully implement RDA cataloging by the end of March 2013. Library and Archives Canada fully implemented the standard in September 2013. British Library , National Library of Australia , and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and other national libraries have since implemented RDA . In
756-545: Is in software packages such as MetaLib , though that package merges it into a wider DTD specification. The MARCXML primary design goals included: The future of the MARC formats is a matter of some debate among libraries. On the one hand, the storage formats are quite complex and are based on outdated technology. On the other, there is no alternative bibliographic format with an equivalent degree of granularity. The billions of MARC records in tens of thousands of individual libraries (including over 50,000,000 records belonging to
810-565: Is undergoing a transition to an international governance structure, expected to be in place in 2019. RDA instructions and guidelines are available through RDA Toolkit, an online subscription service, and in a print format. RDA training materials and texts are available online and in print. RDA is a package of data elements, guidelines, and instructions for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focused linked data applications. The underlying conceptual models for RDA are
864-407: Is widely used in some parts of Europe. The MARC 21 family of standards now includes formats for authority records , holdings records, classification schedules , and community information, in addition to the format for bibliographic records . The MARC standards define three aspects of a MARC record: the field designations within each record, the structure of the record, and the actual content of
918-833: The Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), and Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) maintained by IFLA , and will be compliant with the Library Reference Model , the IFLA standard that consolidates them. RDA Vocabularies is a representation of the RDA entities, elements, relationship designators, and controlled terms in RDF (Resource Description Framework). The Vocabularies are intended to support linked data applications using RDA. They are maintained in
972-496: The International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) provides guidelines for displaying MARC records in a standard, human-readable form. Working with the Library of Congress , American computer scientist Henriette Avram developed MARC between 1965 and 1968, making it possible to create records that could be read by computers and shared between libraries. By 1971, MARC formats had become
1026-669: The OCLC consortium alone) create inertia. The Library of Congress has launched the Bibliographic Framework Initiative (BIBFRAME), which aims at providing a replacement for MARC that provides greater granularity and easier re-use of the data expressed in multiple catalogs. Beginning in 2013, OCLC Research exposed data detailing how various MARC elements have been used by libraries in the 400 million MARC records (as of early 2018) contained in WorldCat. The MARC formats are managed by
1080-542: The 2024–2025 term is Cindy Hohl . President-elect, Sam Helmick , will preside in 2025-2026. The executive director of the American Library Association delegates authority within ALA headquarters to ALA’s department heads, who, in carrying out their assigned duties, are called upon to use ALA’s name, and, in that name, to commit the Association to programs, activities, and binding agreements. Secretaries of
1134-582: The ALA "does not promote any 'ideology'". The Association received the Toni Morrison Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle . The Library History Round Table published the "Bibliography of Library History" database containing over 7,000 entries for books, articles, and theses in library history and related fields published from 1990 to 2022. Cindy Hohl , the first SPECTRUM Scholar to be elected president
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#17328519244301188-597: The ALA and the Office for Literacy and Outreach were established in 1970. In 1971, Barbara Gittings staffed a kissing booth at the ALA Conference underneath the banner, "Hug a Homosexual." This was the precipitating event that evolved into the Rainbow Round Table dedicated to supporting the information needs of LGBTQIA+ people. The American Library Association celebrated its centennial in 1976. In commemoration
1242-676: The ALA commissioned a study, Access to Public Libraries , which found direct and indirect discrimination in American libraries. In 1967, some librarians protested against a pro- Vietnam War speech given by General Maxwell D. Taylor at the annual ALA conference in San Francisco; the former president of Sarah Lawrence College , Harold Taylor , spoke to the Middle-Atlantic Regional Library Conference about socially responsible professionalism; and less than one year later
1296-663: The ALA established an Office in Washington, D.C. named the National Relations Office under the direction of Paul Howard. In 1961, the ALA took a stand regarding service to African Americans and others, advocating for equal library service for all. An amendment to the Library Bill of Rights was passed in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, religion, national origin, or political views. Some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate. In 1963,
1350-410: The ALA guidelines on library services to the poor. The Office for Information Technology Policy was established in 1995 to act as a public policy advocate for libraries in the area of information technology. The "Congress on Professional Education" took place from April 30 to May 1, 1999 in Washington, D.C., with over 100 participating. Its purpose was to reach consensus among stakeholder groups on
1404-589: The ALA, serving as its acting president from April 11 to July 22 in 1976 upon the death of Allie Beth Martin and then elected president from July 22, 1976 to 1977. In 1979 and 1991 the ALA collaborated with the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science on two White House Conferences. In 1983 in response to the National Commission on Excellence in Education Report, A Nation at Risk , leaders in library and information science launched
1458-405: The ALA. In 2014, Courtney Young , president of the association, commented on the background and implications of a racist joke author Daniel Handler made as African American writer Jacqueline Woodson received a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming . "His comments were inappropriate and fell far short of the association's commitment to diversity," said Young. "Handler's remarks come at
1512-484: The Association prior to Carl Milam were George Burwell Utley (1911–20); Chalmers Hadley (1909–11); Edward C. Hovey (1905–7); James Ingersoll Wyer (1902–09); Frederick Winthrop Faxon (1900–02); Henry James Carr (1898–1900); Melvil Dewey (1897–98); Rutherford Platt Hayes (1896–97); Henry Livingston Elmendorf (1895–96); Frank Pierce Hill (1891–95); Mary Salome Cutler (1891); William E. Parker (1890– 1891) and Melvil Dewey (1879–90). The official purpose of
1566-731: The Bibliographical Society of America . In 1911, Theresa Elmendorf became ALA's first woman president. An analysis of the writings of the first fifteen women presidents gives more insight into the expanded role of women in the association. During World War I the ALA Executive Board initiated by Walter Lewis Brown established the Library War Service Committee to supply books and periodicals to military personnel at home and overseas. The American Library in Paris
1620-639: The European Institutions and the major library institutions in the United States, and Canada . MARC 21 is a result of the combination of the United States and Canadian MARC formats (USMARC and CAN/MARC). MARC 21 is based on the NISO / ANSI standard Z39.2 , which allows users of different software products to communicate with each other and to exchange data. MARC 21 allows the use of two character sets , either MARC-8 or Unicode encoded as UTF-8 . MARC-8
1674-577: The Library History Round Table has been documented by the first archivist, Maynard Britchford. Additionally, the American Library Association Institutional Repository (ALAIR) provides digital access to the publications and intellectual work of the Association. ALA membership is open to any person or organization, though most of its members are libraries or librarians. Most members live and work in
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1728-712: The Open Metadata Registry, a metadata registry , and released via GitHub and the RDA Registry. The human-readable labels, definitions, and other textual annotations in the Vocabularies are known as RDA Reference. The RDA Reference data are used in the production of RDA Toolkit content. The RDA Vocabularies and RDA Reference are available under an open license. RDA is in step with the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles published by IFLA in 2009, and updated in 2016. The Committee of Principals for RDA, now
1782-608: The Public Library Association of ALA published the Public Library Services for Strong Communities Report addressing the myriad ways libraries nationwide serve and sustain their communities. That same year, the Montana State Library Commission withdrew from the ALA, citing comments made by Emily Drabinski , who self-identified as a "Marxist lesbian". The Digital Public Library Ecosystem
1836-724: The RDA Board, announced its commitment to internationalization of RDA in 2015. This is reflected in the new governance structure with representation based on the United Nations Regional Groups , comprising, Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, and Oceania. As of May 2017, the RDA Toolkit has been translated from English into Catalan , Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. RDA Reference
1890-646: The US national standard for dissemination of bibliographic data . Two years later, they became the international standard . There are several versions of MARC in use around the world, the most predominant being MARC 21 , created in 1999 as a result of the harmonization of U.S. and Canadian MARC formats, and UNIMARC. UNIMARC is maintained by the Permanent UNIMARC Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and
1944-487: The United States, the cataloguing community expressed reservations about the new standard in regard to both the business case for RDA in a depressed economy and the value of the standard's stated goals. Michael Gorman , one of the authors of AACR2, was particularly vocal in expression of his opposition to the new guidelines, claiming that RDA was poorly written and organized, and that the plan for RDA unnecessarily abandoned established cataloging practices. Others felt that RDA
1998-481: The United States, with international members comprising 3.5% of total membership. The ALA is governed by an elected council and an executive board. Policies and programs are administered by committees and round tables. One of the organization's most visible tasks is overseen by the Office for Accreditation, which formally reviews and authorizes American and Canadian academic institutions that offer degree programs in library and information science . ALA's President for
2052-487: The association is "to promote library service and librarianship." Members may join one or more of eight membership divisions that deal with specialized topics such as academic, school, or public libraries, technical or reference services, and library administration. Members may also join any of the nineteen round tables that are grouped around more specific interests and issues than the broader set of ALA divisions. Task forces: The Committee on Literacy develops and recommends
2106-503: The association published Libraries and the Life of the Mind in America. The American Library Association Archives, established at the time of the centennial, created an online exhibit which includes a history of the centennial. Clara Stanton Jones , president, Inaugural address was titled, “The First Step into ALA’s Second Century.” Clara Stanton Jones was the first African American president of
2160-650: The association's policies related to the promotion of multiple literacies. The Chapter Relations Committee develops and recognizes chapters as integral components of ALA, encourages discussion, activities and programs that support the mutual interests of ALA and the chapters. MARC standards MARC ( machine-readable cataloging ) is a standard set of digital formats for the machine-readable description of items catalogued by libraries, such as books, DVDs, and digital resources. Computerized library catalogs and library management software need to structure their catalog records as per an industry-wide standard, which
2214-623: The committee was approved in 1969 and would change its name to the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) in 1971. After its inception, the Round Table of Social Responsibilities began to press ALA leadership to address issues such as library unions, working conditions, wages, and intellectual freedom. The Freedom to Read Foundation was founded by Judith Krug , Alexander Allain , and Carrie C Robinson and established by ALA's executive board in 1969. The Black Caucus of
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2268-507: The fields remain the same, but those fields are expressed in the record in XML markup . Libraries typically expose their records as MARCXML via a web service , often following the SRU or OAI-PMH standards. MARC encodes information about a bibliographic item, not information about the content of that item; this means it is a metadata transmission standard, not a content standard. The actual content that
2322-502: The main subject content of the work. Other cataloging rules and classification schedules can also be used. MARC 21 was designed to redefine the original MARC record format for the 21st century and to make it more accessible to the international community. MARC 21 has formats for the following five types of data: Bibliographic Format, Authority Format, Holdings Format, Community Format, and Classification Data Format. Currently MARC 21 has been implemented successfully by The British Library ,
2376-490: The primary author of a work, field 245 as the title and field 260 as the publisher, for example. Fields above 008 are further divided into subfields using a single letter or number designation. The 260, for example, is further divided into subfield "a" for the place of publication, "b" for the name of the publisher, and "c" for the date of publication. MARC records are typically stored and transmitted as binary files, usually with several MARC records concatenated together into
2430-577: The project, "Libraries and the Learning Society." Librarians examined how public libraries, academic libraries, library and information science training institutions, and school library media centers could best respond to A Nation at Risk. In June 1990, the ALA approved "Policy on Library Services to the Poor" and in 1996 the Task Force on Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty was formed to resurrect and promote
2484-408: The record itself. Each field in a MARC record provides particular information about the item the record is describing, such as the author, title, publisher, date, language, media type, etc. Since it was first developed at a time when computing power was low, and space precious, MARC uses a simple three-digit numeric code (from 001-999) to identify each field in the record. MARC defines field 100 as
2538-562: The results of their testing. The test found that RDA to some degree met most of the goals that the JSC (Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA) put forth for the new code and failed to meet a few of those goals. The Coordinating Committee admitted that they "wrestled with articulating a business case for implementing RDA", nevertheless the report recommended that RDA be adopted by the three national libraries, contingent on several improvements being made. The earliest possible date for implementation
2592-413: The values and core competencies of the profession and on strategies for action to address common issues and concerns. At the beginning of the century The Congress on Professional Education recommended that the Association develop a set of Core Values. In 2007, Loriene Roy was elected as the first Native American President of the ALA. In 2009, Camila Alire became the first Hispanic president of
2646-511: Was chartered in 1879 in Massachusetts . Its headquarters office is in Chicago . Another important founder was Frederick Leypoldt , publisher of Library Journal , who published the conference proceedings. Justin Winsor was the first president of the ALA, serving from 1876 until 1885. Many early presidents were also officers in the Bibliographical Society of America. See List of presidents of
2700-482: Was founded as part of this effort. In the 1930s, library activists pressured the American Library Association to be more responsive to issues such as peace, segregation, library unions, and intellectual freedom. In 1931, the Junior Members Round Table (JMRT) was formed to provide a voice for the younger members of the ALA. The first Library Bill of Rights (LBR) was drafted by Forrest Spaulding to set
2754-470: Was given as January 2013, as the consensus emerging from the analysis of the test data showed that while there were discernible benefits to implementing RDA, these benefits would not be realized without further changes to current cataloging practices, including developing a successor to the MARC format. Several other institutions were involved in the RDA test. Many of these institutions documented their findings in
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#17328519244302808-600: Was inaugurated in July 2024. Her presidential theme is “A Good Way for ALA.” Standards for Library Services for the Incarcerated or Detained was published in 2024. The ALA Archives, including historical documents, non-current records, and digital records, are held at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign archives. The establishment of the archives and the roles of David Horace Clift , Robert Wedgeworth , Beta Phi Mu , and
2862-443: Was published by ALA in 2023. It is a comprehensive overview of the current state and operations of the relationships and roles of stakeholders including authors, agents, publishers, distributors, the library community, governments, and trade organizations. In 2024, in response to proposed Georgia legislation that would prohibit public expenditures on the ALA, the ALA responded that the legislation "is based on false narratives", and
2916-626: Was too rooted in past practices and therefore was not a vision for the future. In response to these concerns, the three United States national libraries (Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine , and the National Agricultural Library ) organized a nationwide test of the new standard. On 13 June 2011, the Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library, and the National Library of Medicine released
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