Organized in three parts, Making the Move to RDA is a guidebook for applying RDA: Resource Description and Access, the successor to the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2). Author Chamya Pompey Kincy was a UCLA life and social science cataloger and active on committees in the Medical Library Association (MLA), American Library Association (ALA), and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). Chamya had almost finished her book when she died of cancer at age thirty-seven. UCLA colleague, Sara Shatford Layne, finished the book and had it published in memorial to Kincy.

Part 1 discusses RDA’s history and use, models and organization, and major differences with AACR2. This section can be read to gain a basic understanding of the background and development of RDA. The first chapter outlines RDA’s objectives and principles, and clarifies the main differences with AACR2, namely the family of conceptual models that underpin RDA: the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), and Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD). Part I also introduces Group 1, 2, and 3 entities, describing and recording attributes, relationships between entities, and the organization of RDA. The chapter detailing the major differences between RDA and AACR2 describes differences in terminology (such as using “access point” instead of “heading”), conceptual distinctions between the two codes, and changes in other areas such as transcription, granularity, and source information.

Part 2 aims to teach the reader how to master RDA basics, and explains the major instructions contained in RDA, including how to record relationships. This section also describes the attributes of manifestations and items. It provides instruction on the organization of bibliographic elements in RDA chapters 1–4; the attributes of works and expressions in RDA chapters 5–7; attributes of people, families, corporate bodies, and places in RDA chapters 8–11 and 16; and recording relationships between Group 1 entities (works, expressions, manifestations, and items) and Group 2 entities (people, families, and corporate bodies).

Part 3, which focuses on applying RDA in the MARC environment, examines the creation and interpretation of bibliographic and authority records. This section instructs catalogers on creating and interpreting bibliographic records for books, nonbook resources, and authority records, and provides detailed examples and side-by-side comparisons of RDA and AACR2. This section is especially useful to those creating and modifying RDA records.

The book begins with a helpful list of essential acronyms decoded and explained, and ends with a bibliography of cataloging tools, standards, policies, guidelines, and training materials. This reviewer particularly appreciated the straightforward description of the RDA Toolkit’s organization. This exposition complements previous works on this topic, providing more detail of the contrast between RDA and AACR2 than Chris Oliver’s Introducing RDA: A Guide to the Basics (ALA Editions, 2010) while also being somewhat easier to browse than Magda El-Sherbini’s RDA: Strategies for Implementation (ALA Editions, 2013).

Making the Move to RDA will be useful to new and experienced catalogers alike who lack an understanding of RDA, especially those working in a MARC environment. The book is a strong reference guide that will help catalogers navigate the current mixture of RDA and AACR2 records that coexist in today’s catalogs.