John Hostage wrote: > I think what he meant was, what use is it to have access to the PSs if you > can't see the rules they annotate without paying an arm and a leg.
The way Bernhard stated it gave the implication that there was something new in regard to accessing LC policy. But nothing has really changed: access to LC policy was free before (under AACR2), and it is still free now (under RDA). In both cases, there is also the need for separate access (not free) to the rules themselves. To be sure, the difference in cost between AACR2 and RDA is quite substantial, and I do think it's a very regrettable situation that the ALA budget seems to be so dependent upon the revenue from the cataloging rules. Hopefully more affordable ancillary products will crop up eventually. (And hopefully the economics of RDA will change--maybe what must have been horrific costs for the initial development of the RDA text and especially the Toolkit will be paid off, and substantially lower subscription prices will be able to support ongoing maintenance???) Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Northwestern University Library k...@northwestern.edu (847) 491-2939 Proudly wearing the sensible shoes since 1978!
