Something old, something new: rare books and RDA [at the University of Kent]

The library collections at the University of Kent include a full range of accessible lending resources, as well as a unique selection of book collections held within its Special Collections and Archives. The entire lending library’s bibliographic content was migrated from AACR2 to RDA in 2013. Although our rare and special book collections were subjected to some minor RDA enhancements, they were not fully integrated. With an exciting collaborative cataloguing project on the horizon in early 2015, between the University of Kent and Rochester Cathedral, a defined RDA/DCRM(b) hybrid standard was imperative to the success of the venture. With a short deadline ahead of us our efforts became focused on defining a working process to develop a unified cataloguing standard. This article focuses on this working process, the drivers for this, and the cataloguing practice that has emerged as a result of it.

This article is the result of a paper that was given at the Rare Books & RDA Seminar 2015.