Purpose – The purpose of this review is to survey the literature addressing the professional development of academic librarians in the context of adult education principles. Design/methodology/approach – This article is a literature review. Findings – The review reveals that among those activities incorporating concepts from the adult education field andragogy, transformational learning, communities of practice and instructional design are most prevalent. Originality/value – To date, no other literature review considers adult education concepts in professional development of academic librarians.

Adult education concepts in library professional development activities

This study aims at providing in-depth perspectives on the ways in which cataloging and metadata professionals have coped with RDA training and implementation through an e-mail interview method. Results show that the performance-based, “learn-as-you-go,” peer learning method is found by practitioners to be most effective in acquiring and applying RDA knowledge and skills to real work situations. In terms of local RDA training resources, catalogers in research libraries have access to many special in-house training sessions. In contrast, those working in non-research libraries rely mostly on webinars and other online learning materials. The study shows that different versions of RDA instruction and training materials produced by the Library of Congress and other organizations have contributed to some confusion among practitioners. This indicates that it is critical for practitioners to access up-to-date, standard training materials that include concrete examples, best practices, and practical workbooks. The study also points out that there is currently a gap for practitioners between their day-to-day cataloging practices and RDA principles based on the FRBR framework. As RDA moves us to a Linked Data world, there will be a critical need to bridge this gap. The results also indicate that considerable efforts need to be made to provide more training materials in relatively “blank” areas, such as special, non-book formats, and foreign language materials.

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RDA Implementation and Training Issues across United States Academic Libraries: An In-Depth E-Mail Interview Study.

This study is a part of the larger project that develops a sustainable digital repository of professional development resources on emerging data standards and technologies for data organization and management in libraries. Toward that end, the project team developed an automated workflow to crawl for, monitor, and classify relevant web objects into searchable professional development categories. In this study we present the rapid prototyping approach and the iteration and ranking processes used to develop the automatic crawling system. In its final form, the repository will constitute self-sustaining continuing education resources for the cataloging and metadata community.

Developing an automatic crawling system for populating a digital repository of professional development resources: A pilot study

This survey sought to investigate how the transition to the new cataloging standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA), has been handled in one hundred of the largest US public libraries, specifically examining whether catalogers believe that some of RDA’s major goals have been met, and how some of the anticipated impacts of RDA implementation have been handled. A large majority of these libraries have implemented RDA for original cataloging, but respondents also generally believe that RDA has failed to meet some of its most important goals, primarily ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

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RDA Implementation in Large US Public Libraries

The intent of this project was to identify whether there is a gap between catalogers’ personal values related to cataloging assessment and their perceptions of their institutions’ values. This article uses Q methodology to contrast those perspectives. The Q-statements for this study were based on the discourse represented in a literature review of articles related to cataloging assessment. A factor analysis of Q-sorts was used to identify themes in participant perceptions. The patterns identified support the research question, while also suggesting that consensus may be built around the ideas of usability, service, and access.

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Examination of Cataloging Assessment Values Using the Q Sort Method

IntroductionRDA: Resource Description & Access is a new cataloging code that has been developed as a replacement to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2). The development of RDA marks the first major catalog code revision in more than 30 years in the English-speaking library community. While RDA is backward-compatible with most AACR2 instructions, its instructions have been reworked to align more directly with the new conceptual model for bibliographic control as developed in Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). As a practical application of the FRBR model, RDA is intended to provide a flexible and extensible framework that is easily adaptable to accommodate all types of content and media within rapidly evolving technology environments, while also producing well-formed data that can be shared easily with other metadata communities in an emerging linked data environment (IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, 1998).Many RDA-related questions have arisen in the cataloging community over recent years. Questions include key areas of difference between RDA and AACR2, comparison between RDA and other metadata standards, impact on encoding standards such as Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC), end-user considerations, and practitioners' views on the new cataloging code (Tosaka & Park, 2013). At this point, however, the most critical question in the field may be how catalogers and paraprofessionals can prepare themselves for RDA implementation. A successful transition from AACR2 depends first and foremost upon how easily and smoothly practicing catalogers and metadata creators can learn and apply the new cataloging code effectively. This transition may be even more challenging in the changing cataloging department environment today. Comparing transitions to AACR2 and RDA, Inter (2011) wondered, for example, how the cataloging community could best train the army of paraprofessional copy catalogers that handles the bulk of daily cataloging production in most technical services departments, and whether RDA implementation might be hindered by this ongoing process of deskilling in the cataloging profession.A number of studies were initially conducted-mostly by national library organizations-to survey practitioners' views on RDA training when the new cataloging code was published for official release in June 2010 (Tosaka & Park, 2013). The primary goal of this study was to replicate these earlier studies and evaluate practitioners' preparation and expectations about professional training on the eve of RDA implementation. Using nationwide online survey data, mostly drawn from cataloging and metadata librarians in U.S. academic libraries, we sought to investigate prevailing levels of preparation among cataloging and metadata practitioners, perceived readiness to implement the new cataloging code, and perceived areas of training topics and types of continuing education resources needed to support the successful transition from AACR2.Overview of Past RDA SurveysThe implementation of AACR2 in the early 1980s sparked controversies in the U.S. library community that were once described as the "war of AACR2" (Martell, 1981). By contrast, the reception of RDA arguably has not reached the same level of criticism and acrimony. The official release of RDA was followed by several surveys designed to gather information about catalogers' views on the technical, operational, and financial implications of its implementation. These results threw much needed light on how practitioners in the field felt about RDA costs and benefits and how those issues could be better addressed in preparing a smooth transition to the new cataloging code (Tosaka & Park, 2013).U.S. National Libraries RDA TestIn early 2009, the three U.S. national libraries announced a joint plan to test RDA and conduct a systematic review of its operational, technical, and economic implications. …

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Yugi Tosaka

Papers

RDA: Training and Continuing Education Needs in Academic Libraries.