Question: What if my brain freezes when I look at the RDA Table of Contents and I cannot think of a single FRBR keyword or other RDA term to search on?

Answer: RDA Toolkit is here to help!  The Toolkit has a variety of tools to translate familiar AACR2 and MARC21 concepts into RDA-ese, and then guide you to the relevant sections of the RDA text.  Here is one of the simplest tools:

  • Log onto the RDA Toolkit at http://access.rdatoolkit.org/
  • On the left-hand column, click on the middle tab, the one called Tools.
  • Open "RDA Mappings" by clicking on the plus sign.
  • Select "MARC Bibliographic to RDA Mapping."

A long list of MARC21 tags in tag number order comes up.  One column gives you the familiar MARC name for that tag---for example, the 020 subfield a is called "International Standard Book Number."  The far-right column gives you the new RDA name for that element: "Identifier for the Manifestation."  In between the MARC21 name and the RDA name, there is a link (in blue) to the RDA instruction that tells you how to deal with that element.