RDA Simplified

This article summarizes a presentation on Resource Description and Access (RDA) given at the Reaching Forward conference in Rosemont, Illinois, in May 2011. The presenters felt that, with all that has been written about RDA, a look at practical considerations would be welcome. After a brief look at the historical background and the reasons for developing a new code, the presentation focused on some notable differences between Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (AACR2) and RDA in structure, terminology, the treatment of certain classes of access points, and various aspects of description as reflected in bibliographic records