I think Kevin Randall is quite correct in his response to Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, but I think that to a lot of catalogers--and perhaps even moreso to librarians who aren't catalogers--Kevin's response doesn't speak to the totality of the situation. For the record, there is still a chance that RDA will _not_ be adopted, the tenor of the discussion on this list, the RDA list, and Autocat notwithstanding. Kind of reminds me of the early '60s movie in which a group of conspirators decide that the code phrase for their operation going forward will be "Mets win doubleheader." At the time that would have seemed an impossibility, but in the event, the Mets did win a doubleheader on the designated day. As Chuck Berry might (and did) put it, "Goes to show you never can tell." Mike Tribby Senior Cataloger Quality Books Inc. The Best of America's Independent Presses mailto:[log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Program for Cooperative Cataloging [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kevin M. Randall Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 12:10 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Using existing NARs Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz wrote: > If this is a foregone conclusion, why bother with a test? For exactly the reasons I cited: "The value in the RDA test will be in finding out how well the guidelines work, how well the new records play with others, what options are better than others, and just overall what would be the best way to implement RDA." Having a testing methodology, and a discrete set of records (created by people trained to participate in the test) to analyze, will likely tell us a *lot* more than just having an unknown number of catalogers dive into using RDA right away. ("Unknown" being probably any random number between 3 and 30,000...) There is a lot we don't know about actually preparing for and using RDA and its resulting records, and finding out those things will help greatly toward some sort of coordinated implementation down the line. Kevin M. Randall Principal Serials Cataloger Bibliographic Services Dept. Northwestern University Library 1970 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2300 email: [log in to unmask] phone: (847) 491-2939 fax: (847) 491-4345 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.449 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3225 - Release Date: 10/28/10 18:34:00