ABSTRACT
It has been a great honor to assist with the preparation of this special issue of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. The excellent articles gathered here cover many topics, the different stages of implementation of Research Description and Access (RDA), and most welcome of all, a wide range of countries and languages around the world. We start with China and travel west to end up in Australia; a circumnavigation of the globe. There are many more countries engaged in translating and implementing RDA than are represented in the articles, which must in any case be regarded as snapshots of continuous and ongoing processes. Yet much of the information contained will be relevant for many years to come, for those who are intending to implement RDA, review the quality of their legacy data, measure the impact of the globalization of cataloging, or prepare for education and orientation in international standards.
