RDA Toolkit Release – August 9, 2016
A new release of RDA Toolkit was published on August 9, 2016. Releases typically contain updates to content and metadata, enhancements to RDA Toolkit functionality, and fixes to existing bugs. You can subscribe to our RSS development feed to get notification of releases. The details of the August release follow.
Content Updates
The release included corrections, revised examples, and other Fast Track changes from the RSC. Details on these August changes are available in RSC/Sec/3 and RSC/Sec/4 on the RSC site. The release also included a significant expansion of the glossary to include the complete RDA vocabularies and terms related to cataloging practice, as well as the RDA Elements. The release contained revisions to the German language translation putting it in line with the English-language RDA as of the April 2016 release. Revisions to English language MARC/RDA mappings were included. The release contained updates to Library of Congress-Program for Cooperative Cataloging Policy Statements (LC-PCC PS), and Music Library Association Best Practices (MLA BP--details available here), as well as policy statements from Committee for Library Standards for the application of RDA in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, known as Anwendungsrichtlinien (D-A-CH AWRs). A complete list of the revised LC-PCC PSs is available on the Library of Congress website.
Development Updates
The expansion of the glossary described above is the result of an important development project for the RDA infrastructure. The whole of RDA Reference, including the RDA Elements and vocabularies, is now stored and maintained in linked data format. It provides the relevant content for RDA Toolkit and the RDA Registry using a new synchronization platform to ensure that both are in agreement. The RDA Reference data are also available for third-party applications such as RIMMF. The platform allows Elements and vocabularies to be updated more quickly and easily, and provides greater flexibility in the display of RDA Reference and translations in RDA Toolkit.