Inadvertent RDA: New Catalogers’ Errors in AACR2

Abstract

In Fall 2010, in the Music Library at the University of North Texas, a subgroup of the full-time music catalogers were both participating in the U.S. National RDA Test and overseeing the cataloging of a large gift of scores. Student workers (graduate students in music or librarianship) who had never cataloged before produced the records, using AACR2. The librarians actively working on RDA checked their work. This project provided a treasure trove of errors that suggest new catalogers will often produce RDA-compliant cataloging without ever reading an RDA rule but by merely doing what makes sense to them intuitively.

KEYWORDS:

• AACR2
• Ben A. Brown Collection
• cataloging
• Constant Data
• RDA
• RDA-compliant
• students
• training