National Library of China becomes National Institution Representative of RDA Board

Last week, I received a message from Simon Berney-Edwards, Director of Improvement and Development, CILIP, the library and information association, which is based in London. He told me that at the meeting of the RDA Board last week, the National Library of China was selected to be the National Institution Representative: Asia (To serve 2018-2020).
RDA is a continually evolving standard that aims to reflect the requirements of the description, cataloguing and metadata community. One of its original aims was to be applicable across cultures, sectors and perspectives.
RDA is a package of data elements, guidelines, and instructions for creating library and cultural heritage resource metadata that are well-formed according to international models for user-focused linked data applications.

The role of the representative is:

• To provide RDA Board with insight about the impact, challenges and opportunities from the perspective of a national institution that has implemented RDA.
• To provide any relevant feedback from other National Institutions in the region.
• To contribute to the development and delivery of the RDA Board strategic plan for the development of RDA.
• To contribute to the overall governance of the standard including oversight of strategy, delivery, finance and risks.

RDA training and seminar to be held soon

The National Library of China and the Library Society of China will jointly hold an RDA training session and a related seminar on the future of RDA in China.
Barbara B. Tillett, chair of JSC, will host the training session during July 9-11, 2012, and the seminar will be held in the afternoon of July 11, 2012.

Traditional Oriental Format in AACR2 2.5B11

In AACR2 there is the following rule:

2.5B11: "If numbered pages or leaves are printed on a double leaf (e.g., books in the traditional oriental format), give them as pages or leaves according to their numbering. If they are unnumbered, count each double leaf as two pages."

I discussed with a rare book librarian today and have the following suggestions:

1) In "traditional Chinese formats" or "traditional oriental formats" (all ancient books in East Asia are similar in format), thread-binding is the most popular format. There are also many other formats, but they account for just a small percentage. I suggest that "the traditional oriental format" be changed into "some traditional oriental formats" in RDA.

2) For thread-binding format, page numbers are usually printed in the middle of the folded leaves and appear at the margins of book pages. Therefore, we can just describe the leaf numbers, not the page numbers -- in fact, there are no page numbers. In late Qing dynasty (in pre-modern history), some thread-bound books have pages, but they are not representative.

In modern rare book cataloging practices, we usually do not describe page (or leaf) numbers in the physical description area. We just describe volumes, parts and boxes in the physical description area. The reasons are:

a) It is the traditional cataloging practice.
b) There are various paginations in a single title of traditional binding format.

In the drafting of RDA as the revision of AACR2, practices in various countries should be considered.