RSC/LanguagesWG/2023/1

Abstract

The working group was charged with analyzing the concept of “official language” for corporate bodies, and specifically to consider the text in four sections of RDA: ● Corporate Body: preferred name of corporate body ● Corporate Body: category of corporate body ● Corporate Body: category of government ● Place: preferred name of place

For corporate bodies, we have decided that official languages can be too difficult to determine and that an insistence on using them in recording the preferred name of a body can produce results that are not always true to the nature of the body and that also do not serve libraries and their patrons in different national and linguistic environments. We recommend deleting some conditions to give cataloging agencies more flexibility in applying the existing options around the language of the preferred name of a corporate body.

Our charge also includes looking at the preferred name of places, and we have recommendations for changes in this area as well. We support keeping the concept of official languages for places, but recommend removing some redundancy in the text and also making some implicit conditions more explicit.