Instructions, interfaces, and interoperable data: the RIMMF experience with RDA

This paper presents a case study of a software tool developed to bridge the gap between cataloguing rules based on the IFLA FRBR family of conceptual models of bibliographic entities and relations, now in the final stages of consolidation in the FRBR Library Reference Model, and cataloguers maintaining bibliographic data in systems based on inventory and text-processing applications. RDA: Resource Description and Access is the successor to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules and a major implementation of the FRBR model, but the data it is intended to produce is primarily maintained and used in MARC 21 encoding for use in applications that have not essentially changed in the past 40 years. In 2011 a small software company, TMQ Inc., began the development of a prototype cataloguing interface designed purely for RDA and the FRBR model. The RIMMF (RDA in Many Metadata Formats) software package has been tested in numerous field trials, the most notable being the "jane-athons" or hackathons for RDA data involving a wide range of practicing cataloguers. The paper describes how RIMMF interacts with the cataloguing guidance and instructions in the RDA Toolkit and the data elements and value vocabularies in the RDA Registry to present a set of cataloguer-friendly multilingual data input and editing interfaces, and discusses the additional IT infrastructure required to support future operational cataloguing systems.