RDA in Italian: an opportunity to join the international context

At the end of June 2015 the Italian translation of RDA, Resource Description and Access, was completed. This translation is the work of a group of experts, coming from the major public and private Italian universities, libraries and bibliographic agencies, and the Vatican Apostolic Library. Therefore, the Italian translation will be published by ICCU in the RDA Toolkit by the end of 2015 as the official RDA Italian version. The idea of translating RDA comes from the desire to study RDA in details, in order to understand better its underlying principles, the overall system, and the terminology, as well as to analyze the text and the various examples. The conclusion of the translation marks a pivotal point for the future of RDA in Italy. In fact, the time has come for SBN, the most important project of library cooperation achieved in our country to date, to be renovated, to embrace current International principles and standards such RDA, and to move towards technological innovation such as linked open data.