The Key to Building Relationships in RDA

by James Nauenburg

The relating of entities is one of the achievements in the organization of information around which RDA is built. The record holding these relationships and the creation and ease of use for the links between them allows patron driven research to accelerate in ways which are unrealizable in a MARC environment. As previously stated these relationships can be person-to-person, interfamilial, corporate, or resource-based and so on. For example:

·  Virgil is the author of the Aeneid

·  Dryden is the translator Virgil’s Aeneid

·  Heritage Press is the publisher of Dryden’s translation

·  The Kresge Library is the owner of a copy of the Heritage Press volume

In each of these instances, a dispersion of relationships can be created to facilitate a patron’s quest for information, leading to points of access for Virgil, The Aeneid, John Dryden, or works released by Heritage Press; and all within the confines of the Kresge Library Catalog in RDA (when that time comes).

One soon finds that relationships can and do exist between the resources themselves, for instance:

·  A Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy is a part of the series called “A Very Short Introduction.”

·  La stratégie Ender is a translation of Ender’s Game.

·  The journal “Flute” is a successor to “Pan,” and so on.

RDA strongly advocates the building of links between entities, but also the detailing of the nature of each of those relationships in the record/archive. RDA has a number of relationship designators for this very purpose. As a final quick example of only two such indicators, below we see in the RDA authority records by field:

100 1  $a Card, Orson Scott

500 1  $a Walley, Byron  $i alternate identity

…and its inverse in the record:

100 1  $a Walley, Byron

500 1  $a Card, Orson Scott  $i real identity

See also my references for this and previous articles, as well as so much more at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/rda-l@listserv.lac-bac.gc.ca/index.html
http://www.rda-jsc.org/rda.html