Confronting the Unknown Music OCLC Users Group February 26, 2014 Sarah Hess Cohen Florida State University

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How I learned to stop worrying and love the new standard.

April 1, 2013 A year ago, I was sitting in a room in San Jose with many of you, cramming the last bits of RDA knowledge into my head in preparation for the implementation of RDA. At that point, the idea of switching over to RDA simply terrified me. But along with the other catalogers on our campus, the music cataloging staff had made the decision to start using RDA exclusively as of April 1.

Fears But, but, but I know AACR2! I can’t remember all those new fields! Wait, what do you call a main entry these days? What do you mean there’s no main entry? I don’t want to be sucked into a Cascading Vortex of Horror ™! I’m going to make mistakes and everyone on MOUG-L will laugh at me! Why was I so nervous? After all, I had made a point of taking advantage of every RDA training opportunity offered, and had even participated in the MLA/OLAC testing funnel. And yet, I doubted my ability to make the transition.

I still can’t recite chapter and verse of RDA yet, but I’ve come to realize that I know more than I thought I did!

Benefits Familiarity with RDA has increased with use. My backlog remains manageable. Patrons can have access to materials within weeks of arrival. I am providing RDA content to the cooperative cataloging world. Some background about our situation at FSU: We are a stand-alone library, but we share a catalog not only with the rest of campus, but also with the other 10 universities in the State University System. The shared bibliographic cataloging guidelines strongly encourage enhancing records in OCLC before uploading them to the state database. Locally, we and our colleagues across campus have decided that the following items should have RDA cataloging: Anything with a 2013 imprint or later, any earlier-published item which requires original cataloging, and items which require an overlay by a new record.

RELAX! The worst that could happen is that you get stuck in a sofa. (Ask my cat Nikolai about that.)

Come on over! The benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Your colleagues (mostly) have your back. We’re all in this together, learning at the same time. Who knows, you too may become an RDA expert! You’ll have to start using RDA sooner or later, so you might as well start learning now. In the long run, you’ll be thankful. Don’t worry too much about mistakes. If the error is something really egregious, you may get a friendly email from a colleague at another institution. But really, most people are more interested in learning together than in criticizing others. As a side note: Sonia and I taught a cataloging workshop at the SEMLA pre-conference in October. The participants were visibly relieved when I told them that “nobody is an expert yet.”

Elevensies, anyone?

Florida State University Questions? Sarah Hess Cohen Florida State University shcohen@fsu.edu