RDA AND MUSIC REFERENCE SERVICES: WHAT TO EXPECT AND WHAT TO DO NEXT

The imminent implementation of the cataloguing standard Resource Description and Access (RDA) will have a major impact on the library community, and not only on the cataloguer. Users of our online catalogues, for whom RDA was developed, will need to adapt to the new terminology employed by this new standard. However, even before we see the more fundamental and sweeping changes latent in RDA, those that will make their way even into our current MARC environment will affect the work of public services librarians that deal with music materials. The RDA standard, together with how music information is accessed via new discovery systems and also displayed in next-generation catalogues, creates a need for new approaches to providing guidance to our users.