Important Changes

Not every library needs to change all of their MARC records to meet RDA standards. But here are a few changes you may want to be aware of if you use Alexandria:

Series

Series information has moved from the 490 tag to the 830 tag. Alexandria uses the 830 tag for series searches in Researcher, so it's important for your series information to be in that tag. 

To make sure all of your series information is in the right place, run the Fix Series utility. You can also run this utility anytime you import new MARC records and notice series information is in the 490 tag.

Publisher

Publisher information has moved from the 260 tag to the 264 tag. You won't need to move publisher information to properly use Alexandria, but it's a difference you may notice in some records.

Medium

Medium information has moved from the 245_h tag to the 366, 367, and 368 tags. That's right, medium is contained in three separate fields.

How does this work? Previously, medium was described with a General Material Designation (GMD), which is bracketed information that conveys the medium type = [electronic resource] Why? Some things have two types of mediums. some libraries use GMD to later patrons to the format of material (challenge with loss of GMD) 

The RDA standard is different because with the rise of the internet and advancing technology, sometimes more modern media types an item has a more complicated medium. 

For example, a physical book's medium is technically "text-unmediated-volume."

You don't need to use the RDA standard for medium to properly use Alexandria, but you should be aware of how it works within the program.

If you want to switch your mediums from one standard to another, you can do this yourself if you have a smaller collection. However, for bigger collections, save yourself time by using a data cleanup service like Mitinet.

Change From 245 to RDA

authority control

Change From RDA to 245

Sometimes libraries prefer to keep medium information in the 245_h tag and use GMD because it's easier to understand.

First, you'll need to remove all RDA tags from all titles. Run the Remove a MARC Tag utility three times: 336_a, 337_a, and 338_a. Then use the Add a MARC Tag utility to add new 245_h tags if they aren't already there.