RDA, Resource Description and Access, is a set of guidelines developed by the Committee of Principals for AACR, the institution that had promoted, updated and published the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2nd Edition (AACR2). In 2004, the revision of the Anglo-American Rules began at the urging of the Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR; the Joint Steering Committee had already tried to assess possible developments of the model in 1997 at a meeting held in Toronto among the world's leading cataloguing experts. However, in 2005, after realising the obsolescence of AACR2, it was decided to take a completely different approach; the draft of the first part of RDA was published at the end of that year.

Over the next two years other parts of the standard were published and in 2008 the first complete draft of the new revised text was prepared, delivered in June 2009. It was published in a loose-leaf volume and in an online version called RDA Toolkit in June 2010. On 6 November 2015 a new structure for the governance of RDA was established: the RDA Steering Committee (RSC), born from the merger of the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) and the Committee of Principals (COP). The new organisation, responsible for RDA projects and the publication of its updates, is composed of representatives from the Library of Congress, the British Library, Library and Archives Canada, the National Library of Australia, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

Since 31 March 2013 RDA has been adopted by the Library of Congress and many other American, Australian and European libraries. There have also been different translations of the standard into Catalan, Finnish, French, German, Italian (in the process of being updated), Norwegian and Spanish and many more are in progress.

RDA incorporates FRBR, FRAD, ICP and now IFLA LRM. RDA presents itself as the international standard for description and access to resources designed for the digital world. It goes beyond previous cataloguing codes as it is no longer presented as a set of standards, but rather as guidelines, continuously developed and updated instructions allowing for greater flexibility of use.

RDA constitutes a content standard, not a visualisation standard. This implies a clear separation between the instructions dealing with content – with data – and those dealing with its representation.

Contemporary theory has replaced the traditional cataloguing paradigm (Taylor, 1993) in favour of the adoption of metadata methodologies. The tools for the discovery of bibliographic resources have been (and will increasingly be) placed within the language of the Semantic Web. This evolution accentuated the granularity and atomisation of the data. There was a breaking of the compact, closed record in favour of a new open structure. Individual data are assembled and each of them can have connections with other data through relationships. It began:

• • pragmatically and on a technological level with the use of MARC in the mid-1960s

• • consciously on a conceptual level with FRBR at the end of the last century.

In particular, FRBR emphasised individual elements with respect to the record as a whole. FRBR also favoured identifying the data of bibliographic resources (or simply resources) by assigning ‘high’, ‘medium’, or ‘low’ values to individual records.

The valuation of resources was the precondition for shifting from records management to data management, which was a process that involved identifying and connecting data related to:

• • a work

• • an author

• • a subject.

Data are formulated through terms defined by controlled vocabularies and ontologies (the shared and explicit formal representations of specific knowledge domains).

Data management differs from traditional records management and is typical of web-based work. However, data management reinforces the rigour of bibliographic analysis (see Section 4.4) in new technological contexts. An essential argument is that the new record (or dataset) shows a higher respect for the source of information than the traditional record.

Metadata are used in every field and activity of human knowledge. They tend to describe the sets of real-world objects. Metadata may refer to or be a part of, an analogue (a person, a work, an art object, a concept, etc.) and a digital collection. Deriving from this is an extended vision of the metadata field that embraces all the cross-domains that are necessary for the research experience. In fact, in the Semantic Web, there is no distinction between bibliographic data and other kinds of data. There are only linked data: shareable, modular and reusable. Linked data are created, enriched and modified by organisations that are authoritatively active in their fields of specialisation.

On 1 October 2015, OCLC announced with a tweet the printing of the last catalogue card and informed us that the service of supplying catalogue cards to libraries – a total of about two billion – had lasted 44 years. It is just one of the many changes that have occurred in recent years in – to use an expression of Elaine Svenonius – ‘the organisation of information’.

From Cataloguing to Metadata Creation is a long journey between founding principles, objectives and technological evolutions of the ‘information organisation’ service offered by libraries. At the end of this journey, we can identify endeavours in three directions with more awareness.

The first one concerns human–machine co-operation in the creation of metadata. Nowadays, some experiences in the adoption of technologies related to artificial intelligence (AI, also called machine learning) for subject cataloguing (or semantic indexing) are still active. We should remember that artificial intelligence is an ‘algorithmic product completely lacking in flexibility’ (Floridi, 2014) and that ‘the effectiveness of an access system varies according to the intelligence invested in organizing information’ (Elaine Svenonius). In other words, in this context, the levels of skills required by a librarian are higher and higher and it is always his or her ‘intelligence’ that makes the difference. The expected benefits from these ongoing experiences essentially concern the chance to expand the coverage (given the significant increase in resources that require bibliographic control) and not to reduce the costs of cataloguing. Work in libraries – and especially cataloguing – cannot be replaced by robots or unqualified professionals.

The second direction concerns the methods of publishing metadata. We shouldn't forget a critical stage of the journey: MARC. With MARC, libraries were the first sector to understand that, thanks to the intermediation of information technology, the metadata produced by a library could be reused and enjoyed in other libraries (and not only in libraries). We could say that MARC is for bibliographic information what the Semantic Web (or web of data) is for the web tout court (or web of documents). As we have seen, this journey also takes into account the work of libraries on the Semantic Web and linked data. In summary, we could say that the entry of bibliographic data into the web of data will still require a lot of work (if the goal is to guarantee the same diffusion that MARC has now).

5.1 Access: authority data

The process of description – intended as the identification of an entity through the recording of its attributes – is followed by the creation of access points; access points can be defined as links between entities based on the relationships existing among them. (Access points are discussed by ICP, FRBR – and FRAD in particular – and IFLA LRM, as we saw earlier). The access points according to ICP:

• • provide reliable retrieval of bibliographic and authority data and their associated bibliographic resources

• • collocate and limit search results.

Authority data, according to FRAD, is intended as the authorised form of the name or title of a work, combined with other elements that create access to the description.

The recording of descriptive data is textually faithful to their formulation on the sources of information of the resource. At the same time the authority data are structured according to the logic of the reference norms. The formulation of the access point requires an in-depth analysis of the resource that invokes the sense of the Latin verb intelligere, in terms of understanding exactly the meaning of the data, beyond their formulation on the source. Rossella Dini synthesised the concept: ‘In short, it is a matter of establishing an organisation for bibliographical information that reveals their reciprocal relationships in terms of their intellectual content and genesis’ (Dini, 1991, 144).

The access point is chosen based on features of the work, author and conceptual content. It is never discretional and takes into account conventions (though occasionally conflicting) in literary history and in the other sources of information, such as directories (Dunsire, 2020).

Access point, authorised access point and variant access point are formulations specified by ICP. The principles intentionally avoided the use of the term ‘heading’, a term now deemed obsolete, dating back to the catalogue cards. ICP states:

• • an access point is a name, term, code, etc., representing a specific entity

• • an authorised access point is a standardised access point representing an entity

• • a variant access point is an alternative to an authorised access point representing an entity.

In many databases, an access point can potentially be any data linked to a resource; the data can be combined with any other data, including data inferred from the abstract. The access point enables the catalogue to answer specific questions:

• • which works by an author

• • which expressions of a work

4.1 Description: a cultural and technical process

Bibliographic models and international cataloguing principles have attempted to define bibliographic data (description) and authority data (access) precisely to organise information about the resources described.

Description is the primary procedure (in the sense that it is the procedure that is carried out first) of the cataloguing process and is foremost a conscious interpretation of data. It is analysis, evaluation, and reflects knowledge of what is being represented. Its object, therefore, is the resource being examined, which, in Domanovszky's words, still valid decades after their enunciation, can consist of either an elementary object or a main elementary object and secondary object (e.g. aggregates, attachments, supplements) (Domanovszky, 1975).

The description is aimed at the identification and characterisation of a resource, which is simultaneously a material object and an intellectual content – a dimension that has been referred to by many, including Domanovszky. Its inextricable and fascinating ontological duplicity underlies the question: ‘What exactly does the catalogue describe?’ The question is anything but simple and resolved. Rossella Dini writes, ‘What is the object of a bibliographic description? In other words, what should a distinct bibliographic record describe? No code or cataloguing manual has ever established this.’ (Dini, 1991, 135) The question still awaits a comprehensive answer, although FRBR (and later IFLA LRM) posed the problem in explicit terms and, according to Pino Buizza, studied ‘the object of cataloguing in a new, dynamic way’ (Buizza, 2002).

The record, hence, is a set of data that identifies and characterises an entity. Today, description is supported by automated processes (data capture) and will take the form of an ever-increasing enrichment of information already available on the internet. The issue of ‘whom to trust’ will be of vital importance. With the advancement of methods and tools based on artificial intelligence, it is conceivable that we will see a further evolution also in the field of metadata.

The faithful recording of data, i.e. how they are found on the source of information, should not be confused with a mechanical procedure. It is, rather, a method that respects how the data appear on the resource and are recorded, excluding manipulation: for example, transcribing in Latin characters or translating into English an original title in Japanese (as sometimes occurred in the past).

Introduction

This chapter is all about how to manage the problems that come up when you are managing a project. Some of these you will be able to resolve easily; others will require a team effort. The cornerstone of good project management is to have a system to record and deal with risks, and to anticipate and plan for them. No project is risk free and no project ever goes entirely to plan. From elements you may have forgotten about in your project plan, to issues that arise when you are on site that you haven't accounted for, something will go wrong, but you won't have failed if you are prepared and have set up, in advance, a way of dealing with these issues.

Risk appetite

Before you can manage the risks on your project you will need to understand the museum's attitude to risk. Just as in personal life, each museum will have a different appetite for taking risk and different ways for dealing with and planning for changes that come its way.

The coronavirus pandemic that hit in spring 2020 put a severe test on all museums, but those that had considered how they would cope in a crisis and had systems in place to help them manage this sudden and unexpected change were able to adapt more quickly to the shocking effects of sudden closure. The effect of the pandemic was such that no risk management plan or crisis plan worked perfectly. The devastating impact of months of closure was not something that any institution could adequately guard against and led to inevitable but heart-breaking decisions to make staff redundant or, in some cases, close the doors permanently. The lesson here is that you can't plan for every eventuality, but you can plan for how you will react if the worst happens. Having good documentation in place throughout the project will help you if something unexpected does happen. If, like during the coronavirus pandemic, you are forced to stop operations on site for a period, you will need to know exactly where you are in your contracts, how much work has been completed and what money is owed to all your suppliers and contractors (see Chapter 10).

Introduction

In this chapter we will look at how to appoint the designers and what they will need in order to produce the concept design for the exhibition. The chapter doesn't provide a full description of all the tasks that need to be undertaken, but is an outline that will help you to understand what needs to be done and the key moments you will need to add to the project plan. By the end of this chapter, you should have a good understanding of the point where the exhibition process transitions from planning into execution, and you will know how to brief the key external staff that you will need to bring in to your project.

Appointing designers

The expertise that most often needs to be sought externally is that of designers. To create an exhibition, you generally need three or four types of designer: those who will create the structures and set works to display objects (3D designers); those who will design all your graphics (2D designers); someone who will develop any AV for you; and lighting design. Sometimes this expertise comes together in the form of a design company, but quite often you will need to recruit creatives from different sources to put together the exhibition. The 3D designers will design a wide range of things to make an exhibition come to life, from the positions of showcases in the room and the layout of objects within them and the label holders, to large pieces of set works that will create the environment for the exhibition. These set works can be as varied and extensive as your budget and space allows. The 2D designers will help you to choose fonts, colours and style for the graphics. The graphical language of an exhibition is very important in helping to set a tone and atmosphere for the display. Just think about the influence of graphics on our lives, such as the distinctive London Underground font, or the choices we make when creating presentations. AV needs will be driven mainly by the content and interpretation plan, while lighting will be crucial to displaying the objects, quite literally, in the best light.

There are a number of approaches to bringing a designer on board. You may choose to bring them in early in the process to be part of the discussions about the overall vision for the exhibition.

Introduction

In this chapter we will look in more detail at the design process, examining the activities that take place in scheme design and detailed design. We will also look at how the design stages map onto the architectural project management framework of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Work, so that if the exhibition is part of a larger museum refurbishment or you are using one of the larger design companies you can understand how this framework fits in.

Scheme design

At the scheme design stage things start to be firmed up; the exploratory phase of the design has ended. You have approval for the concept and how you will implement the project. Now the designers will focus in more detail on the chosen option. In this stage they will fix the position of the showcases and start looking in more detail at where AV and graphics will be sited. They will start to design in more detail the display of the objects within the showcases and how those objects that are to be on open display will be presented, and they will consider any interpretive or design elements that you may wish to include. They will start thinking about how the set works might be created and will work with you to develop the concept further, thinking about the materials they will use, the colours and some of the details like where the graphics will go, the position of objects and the design of the set works. They will also consider the services (electrical, data etc.) that will be needed to bring the concept to life. Questions to be considered will include: are the showcases in the right places to get power? Is the floor loading sufficient for that bit of set works? Where will the graphics be sited? What will the colour scheme be? Which materials will work with this design?

It is at this stage that some elements may be prototyped and tested on visitors. The curators and interpretation specialist may start writing some sample text and, with the 2D designer, trying out fonts in the sizes that they think will work in the space so as to get an idea of word counts and how things will look.

Introduction

In this chapter we will discuss how, once you have set up your programme (see Chapter 2), you will manage it throughout the project. We will look at how keeping an eye on the project and the cost plan together can help you form a picture of how the overall project is progressing and how communication will help you to keep on track. Much of programme and project management is about honing your leadership skills, and we will explore some of those skills in this chapter.

How to manage the programme

Chapter 2 discussed the mechanics of how to set up a project timeline or programme. But there is much more to your role as PM than just this: you must actively manage the programme – it won't just happen because you have written it down, and it is quite likely to change as you progress through the journey of exhibition design and your and your team's ideas about the exhibition change. So, how do you do this?

You need to know your programme well, to make sure that you understand it and to remember why you put things in the order that you did and what decisions you reached about the allocation of the work. If necessary, keep notes so that if you do change things later you can be clear about the impact this may have on your earlier assumptions. It is a good idea to keep a record of each iteration of your programme, so that if it does change you can track where the changes were made and why. This will help you to spot any problem team members or any areas of the project that are not as straightforward as you had imagined – and it will help you on your next project, as perhaps you under- or overestimated the time certain tasks would take. Take a regular look at your programme and be honest about how well you and the team are meeting the deadlines that you set. Don't be afraid to work with the team to adjust the programme if this becomes necessary; but also try not to make a habit of this, as the programme should be as static as possible and the team will only become confused and not respect deadlines if they are constantly changing.

Introduction

You have said goodbye to the build contractor, all the objects are in their cases, the site is tidy and clean and you have passed the gateway moment of getting approval that you can hand over the site to the operational team. But this isn't the end of your work. Preparing for opening starts before and continues during the build and installation work and needs to be planned for and monitored just like every other part of the exhibition process. What does getting ready for opening look like, and what tasks do you, the PM, need to plan for?

For an exhibition to be successful not only does it need to look good and be informative and relevant; it also needs to be integrated into the museum experience and communicated to the public at large. This chapter looks at some of the tasks you will need to undertake alongside and immediately following the physical construction of the space.

Communication

No matter how wonderful the exhibition is, it won't mean anything if people don't know about it. The project plan needs to include time, space and, if it is to be included in the exhibition budget, money for marketing and public relations (PR) activities. Your communication could be as simple as updating the museum's website or as complex as a full marketing and PR strategy. Whichever route the museum takes, the delivery of this work needs to be monitored and included in the project plan. Even if the museum has a separate marketing or PR department, it will still need information from the project team at key moments, and this could take your team by surprise or divert them from on-site project work at a crucial time if they are not prepared for it.

Early on in the project, when you are putting together the project plan, you should discuss the needs of project and marketing/PR teams and build in time for the curators to write or edit copy for the website, books or social content, making sure that the deadlines for these elements don't clash with key dates for writing or reviewing exhibition text.

Any marketing or press work will probably require photography of star objects and images of the exhibition in its finished but unopened state, ready for launch day.

This book grew out of my years of experience of running varied projects, not all of them exhibitions at Historic Royal Palaces, where I have been based since 2008. Before this, I worked as the Interpretation Manager at the British Museum, and even further back as a Museum Development Officer in the south-west of the UK. My experience has been varied, seeing museums of all sizes and types develop innovative exhibitions and put on excellent displays. As well as understanding the theory of project management, I urge you to get to know the sector you have chosen. Go to as many exhibitions as you can and learn from them what works and what doesn't work for the visitor; talk to the staff involved in putting them together and those involved in their operation, and learn from their experience. Being a good project manager (PM) can be learned through theory, but being a great one takes a passion for the sector and a deep and thorough understanding of how people react to pressure, deadlines and the fast pace of project implementation. On each project I am part of I learn something new about myself and about the process of successfully seeing a project through to completion. I hope this book helps you on your journey and I wish you success in achieving the satisfaction that comes from seeing a project successfully completed.

In the following chapters you will learn all about the skills and techniques you need to be a successful PM. Being able to manage projects is an essential skill for working in the museum and heritage industry. Although these skills aren't always formally taught on heritage management courses or required in job descriptions, they are in use by museum staff every day. All exhibitions are projects; moving a collection to a new store is a project; carrying out research for a book and writing it is a project. But often these tasks aren't described as projects, or perhaps your museum isn't familiar with the process of project management and therefore the steps taken to plan an exhibition successfully aren't formalised. Most people have to pick up these skills by trial and error.

Introduction

Along with programme and overall quality, managing the cost of the project is one of the main roles of a PM. A good PM should keep an eye on the amount that is being expended at all times, and this often means that you have to look at both the big picture and the granular detail. This is not easy, but is a skill that can be learned, and the more projects you complete, the easier it will get. The best way of tackling budget management is to take a systematic approach to what you are doing and to use the expertise of those around you to estimate costs and keep a tab on what is going on. Every museum will have its own financial systems, so, rather than going into detail about the mechanics of ordering goods or invoice management, this chapter is about how to keep a tab on the costs. We will look at the importance of valuing the work completed so as to help you judge if you are on track, and the chapter provides some suggestions on how to set up a cost plan so that you will have all the right information in an easy-to-access format that, once set up, can be used again and again over subsequent projects.

Understand your finances

Before you can start effectively managing your budget it is essential to understand how your own museum's budgets work and how you will be expected to manage and report on any budgets that are delegated to you. Each museum is different in how it assigns funds, often depending on its size and the regularity with which it puts on new exhibitions and shows. Before you start you will need to know what your exhibition budget is expected to cover. Is it the fees and costs solely related to producing the exhibition itself, or are you also required to fund the marketing of the exhibition and any material produced about it, such as a catalogue or booklet? Will you need to account for materials for schools, and what about any supporting programmes such as family workshops or lectures on the subject?

Introduction

Getting the outline vision and objectives of the exhibition right so that it appeals to the audience and aligns with the museum's goals is crucial, but is often overlooked as part of the exhibition process and isn't always part of a project plan. Projects run much more smoothly if time is built into the programme for this work. You will need to allocate time and resources; it doesn't necessarily need to cost a great deal, but it does need thinking time. If you skip this stage and dive straight into designing the exhibition this can lead to a confused narrative, problems in selecting objects and even being forced to change designs later in the process so as to accommodate ideas or narrative concepts that could have been planned for before you got going – adding cost, causing delays and making your life as the PM much harder. Having a really clear vision of what you want to achieve will save you time and, ultimately, make the exhibition better. Ensuring that it fulfils the museum's vision and goals is a must. So how do you go about this? This chapter proposes a number of steps for coming up with, testing and refining the exhibition idea. It includes information on how to manage the creative process and establish an outline narrative, how to consult so as to ensure that the idea works and how to analyse the ideas so as to create meaningful and actionable objectives for the project.

The creative process: coming up with the right idea

The first stage is coming up with the overall idea for the exhibition – thinking about and generating, developing and evaluating ideas. Often this stage is completed before a PM is brought on board and ends with a simple outline proposal, sometimes called a mandate, which is approved in principle for the next stage of development. This is the point where you as PM are most likely to be tasked with taking the project forward. This part of the process – generating these first creative ideas and coming up with an idea, theme or central concept for an exhibition – is covered by another book in this series, Unlocking Collections by Maria Blyzinsky.

If the idea is approved for inclusion in the museum's exhibition schedule or for further development, it is usually given to a team to develop further.

Now that you have a defined vision for the exhibition it is time to start planning how you will carry out the work to make the exhibition a reality. It is often at this point that a PM is assigned to work on an exhibition – although the previous chapter will have demonstrated how important it is for this to happen earlier in the process. The three chapters in Part 2 look at how to set up your project team, interpretation planning and the process of appointing and working with designers to create the concept design.