Navigating RDA Toolkit

The dark blue bar at the very top of the website contains a toolbar that provides access to profile features. The content of this menu changes depending on whether you are logged in. Four labels are always there: Original Toolkit, Help, your preferred language, and Submit Feedback. The Original Toolkit button provides a link to the original RDA Toolkit. The Help button allows for access to the help documents you are currently viewing.

Preferred Language

Hover over the displayed language to open a drop-down menu.

Site language is the language of the website, including the RDA content and the user interface. This reflects the language preference you have set in your profile. If you are not logged in to your profile, the display will default to your language setting on your browser. If the language setting in your browser is not available on RDA Toolkit, the default will be English.

RDA language is the language of RDA content, and nothing else. This will allow users to quickly switch the language of RDA content displayed with out changing their preferred language setting. Changing the RDA language setting will not change the language of the user interface.

Font size allows you to easily increase the font size from the Toolkit by selecting “Large.” This will only increase the font size from the “Normal” size. If you would like the font larger than the “Large” display, try the zoom feature in your browser.

Submit Feedback

Clicking on this label will open up the submit feedback form in a new window or browser tab. Use this form to submit feedback on the RDA Toolkit.

Once you are logged into the RDA Toolkit, three new icons will appear in the Profile Toolbar. These features allow you to customize the Toolkit and access content you have created.

Bookmarks and Notes

Clicking on this label opens up your bookmarks and notes. A bookmark provides a link to a place in the RDA Toolkit and marks that place with the bookmark symbol. A note is similar to a bookmark, but also allows you to write text that will appear when you hover over the note icon. Notes may be shared locally with other Toolkit users at your institution. Bookmarks are for private use only. Learn more about bookmarks and notes in the Personalizing the Toolkit section of Help.

Documents

Hovering over this label will open a drop-down menu that provides access to user-supplied documents or to managing your own documents and preferences. Learn more about documents in the Personalizing the Toolkit section of Help.

Views

Clicking on this label will open a drop-down menu that will allow you to switch views or click through to manage your views. Views are where you can set your site preferences. Learn more about documents in the Personalizing the Toolkit section of Help.

Content tabs are located in the bottom portion of the blue banner. This banner will show your institution’s name and your name when you are logged in. The four content tabs represent the high-level browse of the Toolkit content.

Each content tab contains a drop-down menu, which you can view by moving your cursor over the tab. Although you can see the menu contents when you are not logged in, you cannot access these pages unless the content is outside the paywall.

Entities

This menu lists the thirteen RDA entities. The first entity listed is RDA Entity, a superentity to the other twelve. The other entities are listed in Library Reference Model (LRM) order. To view an entity page, place your cursor over the entity name and click once. From the entity page, you can scroll down to the Elements section to access specific elements.

Guidance

This menu lists the guidance chapters of RDA, which contain general information and instructions. The first guidance chapter is the Introduction to RDA; subsequent guidance topics are then listed alphabetically. General concepts are presented in the guidance chapters; specific instructions for a particular element are located in the Recording section of that element.

Policies

All policy statements will be available from this drop-down menu. From this menu, you can select sets of policy statements to view in the main pane of the Toolkit.

Policy statements can also be viewed in the right column along side RDA instructions. At the top of the right column of a RDA page there is a drop-down menu with the label "Select Policy Set." Opening the menu and making a selection will display the policy statements of the selected set in the right column. The display (shown below) begins with a solid, thin line that extends to the RDA instruction text, indicating the passage relevant to the policy statement. The upper left corner contains the an identifier of the policy set, that can be clicked to take the user to the policy set page. In the upper right corner is the text "Send to Back." Click the text to move a policy statement that is blocking your view of other content out of your view. A short, dashed line indicates the end of a policy statement. Longer policy statements will scroll after the display of 12 lines.

You can set your profile to allow viewing of policy statements in any language in the right rail. To activate this feature, follow the instructions in this document.

Resources

The Resources tab contains RDA reference material, language community resources related to RDA, and other information. The first two menu items are for RDA reference material, which includes the glossary and the vocabulary encoding schemes (RDA value vocabularies).The Revision History includes the archive of past instructions and information on past releases. There is a link to the Original Toolkit. The last menu item is an online presentation of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition, also known as AACR2. Both the Original Toolkit and AACR2 are hosted on separate sites from the official Toolkit and require a login to access the content. Use your institution's username and password to log in and view the content.

Community Resources

Community resources (CR) provides access to guidance on community-specific topics that are not within the scope of RDA. The Legacy RDA Community Resources section contains instructions that have been removed from RDA, because they were deemed no longer in line with RDA goals. RDA Toolkit subscribers may add their content to CR with the permission of the RDA Steering Committee. There are two methods of participating in the CR space, as a partner or as a contributor. Partner organizations are able to use the Toolkit's content management system to create documents as well as policy statements. This option does involve an agreement with the publishers of RDA and a fee. Contributing organizations use the HTML editor found in the Toolkit to contribute documents to CR. There is no fee with this option, but permission from the RSC is still required. To request permission to contribute to the CR space, complete and submit this online form.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumb navigation appears above the title of most Toolkit pages. The breadcrumbs provide some context for the subject of the page. Labels in the breadcrumb list are linked.

Top Arrow

When you scroll down from the top of a page a blue arrow, pointing upward, will appear in the lower right corner of the screen. Click the arrow to return to the top of the page.

Clicking on a Link

Clicking on a hyperlinked phrase (blue underline) will open up the linked content in the main pane, replacing whatever page you were on in the main pane. If you do not wish to navigate away from the current screen, use the preview icon instead.

Preview Icon

The preview icon follows every hyperlinked text string and looks like a page with an arrow pointing to the right. Clicking on the preview icon will display the link target column in the right column of the page

Element Lists

Every entity page contains an alphabetical list of elements. If you know the first few letters of the element you are looking for, you can use the search box, which contains a type-ahead keyword search feature. The radio buttons above the search box allow users to filter from "All" elements to attribute elements or relationship elements. A drop-down menu allows users to filter relationship element by range.

The type-ahead search is keyword-based so typing “access” will retrieve “access point for agent" but not "authorized access point for agent." Currently, the element search box on an entity page is the only search box that has a type-ahead feature.

Expand/Collapse Boxes

The boxes that contain an eyeball (Element Reference and Examples) will expand and collapse by clicking once on the eyeball or caption. Expanding the boxes will reveal more information on the screen without scrolling.

Pop-Up Definitions for RDA Terms

There are lists of RDA value vocabulary terms throughout the element pages. These lists contain terms that have a dotted orange underline. Click once on the term to have the definition pop-up. Click again to have the definition box close. These terms and definitions are also available in the Glossary and Vocabulary Encoding Schemes sections, both located in the Resources tab.

The Toolkit includes a pop-up toolbar that allows users to create bookmarks, notes and links and reveal a citation number. The pop-up toolbar can be activated simply by selecting a block of text in the main column of most pages. The pop-up toolbar is not available in Vocabulary Encoding Scheme pages, the Glossary, or the following sections of element pages: definition and scope, element reference, and related elements.

Create a Link

To link to a passage on RDA Toolkit, click and drag the cursor across the passage of interest to highlight it. The pop-up toolbar will appear.

Select the link icon (second from the right), and a box will open that says “Create Link.” A URL is supplied for you. Click “Copy” to copy it to your clipboard.

Find a Citation Number

To find a citation number in order to reference a passage on RDA Toolkit, click and drag the cursor across the passage of interest to highlight it. The pop-up toolbar will appear. Select the # icon on the right and a box will open that says “View Citation.” A number is supplied for you. Click “Copy” to copy it to your clipboard.

Citation numbers are intended to be used for forms of communication where linking is not practical, such as print. The numbers appear only in entity/element and guidance pages. The citation numbers are associated with headers (excluding the page title, Definition and Scope, Element Reference, and Related Elements) and condition and option boxes. Page titles are not assigned citation numbers. The numbers are all formatted as xx.xx.xx.xx, and they are assigned randomly. There is no order to the numbering.

A citation number may be entered in the search box and will resolve directly to the referenced passage, which will be highlighted.

Document Data

The document data is found at the bottom of each toolkit page. The data includes two components – the document date and the document URL.

The document date reflects the last update to a page. An update refers to a page change to a page that has been reported in release notes. Dates are formatted yyyy/mm/dd.

The document URL is the uniform resource locator for the page being viewed.