RDA: a content standard to ensure the quality of data

Abstract

RDA Resource Description and Access are guidelines for description and access to resources designed for digital environment and released, in its first version, in 2010. RDA is based on FRBR and its derived models, that focus on users’ needs and on resources of any kind of content, medium and carrier.  The paper discusses relevance of main features of RDA for the future role of libraries in the context of semantic web and metadata creation and exchange. The paper aims to highlight many consequences deriving from RDA being a content standard, and in particular the change from record management to data management, differences among the two functions realized by RDA (to identify and to relate entities) and functions realized by other standard such as MARC21 (to archive data) and ISB (to visualize data) and show how, as all these functions are necessary for the catalog, RDA needs to be integrated by other rules and standard and that these tools allow the fulfilment of the variation principle defined by S.R. Ranganathan.