Jim Weinheimer wrote: As one of those veteran catalogers, I honestly do not see how the changes in RDA have a lot of potential. Which changes do you have in mind? The abbreviations? The changes in the headings of the Bible? The lack of the $b in titles?
--------------------------------------------- One could argue interminably the pros and cons of abbreviating or not. I can see merits to both sides, as well as to native language representation of missing date issue. (That is, the replacement of [s.l.] with [place of publication not identified], where [s.l.] replaces the earlier [n.p.] for "no place".) I am however adequately convinced by the machine processing crowd to hold my reservations in abeyance. The Bible heading changes would happen regardless of RDA -- they were the last proposal to change AACR2 and were rolled into RDA rather than causing a new update to AACR2 in the middle of the RDA development process. If by "lack of $b in titles" you mean that the "Other title information" element is not part of the core elements of RDA, I would point out, insofar as AACR2 had core elements which I will equate with the "first level of description" articulated at 1.0D1, it is neither a core element of AACR2. The equivalence of the RDA core element set as a "Full level" record is an undesirable possibility, but is a consequence of policy implementation not of RDA itself. John F. Myers, Catalog Librarian Schaffer Library, Union College 807 Union St. Schenectady NY 12308 518-388-6623 mye...@union.edu
