Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

This article examines the benefits of a Resource Description and Access (RDA) enrichment project for libraries. Enrichment projects “hybridize,” or enrich legacy Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2) bibliographic records with RDA data. Until a replacement for MARC is developed, bibliographic data will continue to be encoded in MARC 21 in many integrated library systems. Library catalogs contain records coded under both AACR2 and RDA standards. RDA enrichment projects benefit the patron experience because the data is cleaner and more consistent for patron use and display, cataloging staff workflows are simplified, and the consistency of the data is advantageous for system development and data exchange with other communities.

The 2005 revision of Library Congress Rule Interpretation 22.17, allowing the addition of death dates to personal name headings with open dates, had a significant impact on the maintenance of
bibliographic records. The decision not to include open date forms as “see from” fields in revised authority records destined catalog maintenance staff to higher levels of manual review and editing. At Kent State University this prompted a search for better options and resulted in the creation of a shadow authority file intended solely for automated “flipping” of open date headings to the new forms. The file is available to other libraries for use and experimentation.