It's the season for bah humbug and in any case I've always been an RDA sceptic. It's not that I think it is out-and-out wrong, just that I'm not convinced that it is going to make a real difference to anything. Too many people are already saying that for RDA to be any good then we'll have to get rid of MARC as well, so it is going to be like unwrapping that Christmas present with great excitement and anticipation and then finding that it needs batteries to make it go and all the shops are shut. And so, in the metaphorical sense, I don't have a lot of time for RDA.
But I don't have time for RDA in the literal sense either. I signed up to the RDA mailing list and now, every morning when I sit down and log on, there are anything up to 30 emails waiting for me, all well-argued and interesting, and written by people with a much better grasp of cataloguing theory and much better brains than mine, on all aspects of RDA from the big picture to the teeniest tiniest subfield - and I haven't got time to read them. I simply haven't got time to engage with RDA in the way I should and the way I would like to. And that's before we get into the business of practical familiarisation and training (assuming that RDA is adopted, and I think that too much has been invested in it for it not to be adopted, whatever its rights and wrongs).
With the constant mantra to do more with less, and the current climate of cuts, I need RDA at the moment like I need a hole in the head. In fact, in the current climate of cuts, it's entirely possible I'll get the hole in the head before I get to RDA.
Happy Christmas everyone!
