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Dear List,

There is something that has been gnawing at my mind & won't go away, so I will share it.  Now that Day 1 has passed, the issue is no longer theoretical, but a very real presence on my (and lots of other people's) desk(s).

When evaluating and recoding authority records to RDA, I think we NACO participants need to clarify whether we want to be making the authorized access points "truly RDA compliant" or "RDA acceptable", and why.  Philip Schreur's message of 3/21 said, in part:

"In an informal evaluation at the end of 2012, four PCC libraries evaluated and recoded to RDA all RDA acceptable headings needed in their work. Approximately 5% of those headings needed their 1XX altered to become truly RDA compliant."

It would be helpful to see a representative sample of the 5% that were changed.  If they were unique, capable of serving user tasks, and not in clear violation of RDA, I would say that they should have been recoded as RDA without change.  It would spare everyone a great deal of file maintenance (or the alternative, split files) without any offsetting gains in service to patrons (and it would build confidence with managers who believe we fuss too much over such things).  But we need to see these headings, to find out if there really is a disagreement here, and if so, what is the magnitude of it.

Also, what is the current status of Phase 3 of the NAF transformation?  As I understand it, Phase 3 would automatically recode all AACR2 authority records that lack the cautionary 667 as RDA.  That sounds good to me-especially if the alternative is to re-examine every record individually, over 7 million of them, to find the 5% that aren't entirely pure.  However, a recent PCC message made me wonder if Phase 3 will go forward.  It said, in part, "At one point we envisioned the 95% of records in this category [currently AACR2 in NAF and lacking the special 667] being recoded through automated means."

Here are some relevant excerpts from documentation:

Following the evaluation of RDA, it was decided that whenever possible the AACR2 heading for an entity should continue to be used under RDA ... (from Dealing with RDA 7XX fields: paper prepared by the PCC Acceptable Headings Implementation Task Group)

"In order to minimize the impact of database maintenance with associated bibliographic records and/or name/title authority records catalogers are urged to refrain from making unnecessary changes to 1XXs."  (DCM Z1, 1XX)

I'll be away for a couple of days but will be able to respond to comments later in the week.

Mary Jane Cuneo
Serials cataloging and NACO
Information and Technical Services
Harvard Library