Queen’s has now implemented new rules for the description of catalogue items. This brings us into line with RDA (Resource Description and Access) cataloguing principles – a revised approach to cataloguing currently being adopted by the library community. The new description rules will only affect new and revised entries in our catalogue and the immediate impact will be relatively slight.
The main changes are as follows:
- No more use of standard abbreviations in edition statements and elsewhere (edition statements transcribed as they are in the source; ‘pages’, ‘illustrations’ etc spelled out).
- Additional designators, ‘author’, ‘editor’, ‘illustrator’ etc, follow names given in the catalogue record (these can be seen under ‘added authors’ in the full catalogue record)
- ‘[electronic resource]’ and ‘[videorecording]’ no longer to be used as an addition to the title entry for non-print material (ebooks, ejournals and DVDs).
The long term strategy for RDA is to create an approach to catalogues and cataloguing in which different ‘expressions’ of works – e.g. various editions, translations etc – are grouped together under entries for a work. Different media ‘manifestations’ are also to be described more exactly. We are adding the relevant database entries for this, but the new fields will not be displayed in the immediate future.
The effect of the new rules can be seen in the following QCat records:
https://encore.qub.ac.uk/iii/encore_qub/record/C__Rb1751547
https://encore.qub.ac.uk/iii/encore_qub/record/C__Rb1864545
https://encore.qub.ac.uk/iii/encore_qub/record/C__Rb1864897
https://encore.qub.ac.uk/iii/encore_qub/record/C__Rb1866037 (ebook)
https://encore.qub.ac.uk/iii/encore_qub/record/C__Rb1865447 (DVD)