Having been tasked with an assignment titled ‘descriptive cataloguing’, I dived into a world of new terms and time spent agonising over whether to include something in brackets or not. Thankfully the assignment is now completed and I get to await my results but what did I learn along the way?
While the RDA (Resource Description & Access) Toolkit was initially daunting with its menus, sub menus and appendices the underlying purpose of having clearly defined rules/pathways to select which pieces of information to record in what way and where quickly became clear. This may be because organisation – while not always present in my backyard workshop or garden shed – appeals to me.
Perhaps the biggest take away form the assignment is the importance of recording data across all information platforms consistently to enable the interoperability of data and that this has to tie into the reason for the data in the first place; which is to allow users to locate and then use the resource that the data describes.