A structural approach to Resource Description and Access (RDA) standards with emphasis on its basic models: functional requirements for bibliographic records and functional requirements for authority

RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the new standard for resource description and access designed for the digital world. This new standard is superseding the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules 2 (AACR2) and attempts to address the challenges of the new age of information and to develop new rules for description of and access to modern media and the resources available in databases. The increasing tendency in libraries and information centers to include digital resources makes familiarity with the new rules like RDA necessary. In the present paper a brief introduction of this standard and its requirements and goals are presented, followed by a comprehensive evaluation of the structure of this model and its foundations: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD). In addition, the main differences between RDA and AACR2 have been surveyed.