RDA adoption in a multilingual cataloguing environment: The case of Israel

Abstract

The Israeli library reality presents unique challenges to the adoption of a new cataloguing standard. Foremost amongst these is the multilingual work of cataloguing agencies; terminology must be coordinated with worldwide usage in English and Cyrillic and terminology must be created in Hebrew and Arabic. The structure of the Israeli cataloguing world presents a further challenge: since the early 1980s cataloguing policy has been set by a handful of university libraries, with college, public, and school libraries obeying. This semi-voluntary cooperation began to crumble just as RDA adoption got underway.

Another roadblock to full adoption of RDA is the format of the Israeli rules. The new Israeli cataloguing guidelines are inspired by AACR3 rather than RDA; the Israeli cataloguing textbook retains the structure of AACR2 while changing specific actionable rules. Only guidelines relevant for common types of books have been translated and local policies for other material types have yet to be set. There is no system of professional development for cataloguers and no professional organizations coordinate the flow of information to and from decision makers. Without training individual cataloguers have difficulty in applying "cataloguer's judgement"; they do not have a theoretical base upon which to make decisions nor explicit rules to follow.

Israeli cataloguing has an impact far outside its national borders given its role as a primary provider of bibliographic and authority records for Hebraica, Judaica, and Palestinian resources and entities. An examination of RDA adoption in Israel sheds light not only on the management of change in a complex situation but also explains idiosyncrasies in Israeli cataloguing records.