AUK Library Staff Attended RDA Workshop at The American University Of Beirut

AUK Librarians Ms. Hana Kaouri and Mr. Fadhel Husain have attended a workshop on RDA (Resource Description & Access) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). The week long workshop was jointly organized by the AUB Libraries and the American International Consortium of Academic Libraries (AMICAL) to address the new cataloging standard which is currently being implemented across libraries in the world. The workshop, which was led by two expert trainers from UCLA and the University of Oregon, offered a general overview of the new cataloging rules which will replace the Anglo-American Cataloging rules, second edition (AACR2) standards. The workshop also highlighted new changes, and compared the new cataloging rules with the previous ones through discussions, and hands-on exercises and modules. Participants included librarians from various countries, including Egypt, Bulgaria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Kuwait.

The new cataloging rules possess enough flexibility to incorporate future methods of encoding descriptions of library resources. As of April 1, 2013 the U.S. Library of Congress and the British Library are using RDA as their official descriptive cataloging standard. Several other libraries also plan to implement RDA in 2013.

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 5th June 2013