Planning an Authority Control Project at a Medium-sized University Library

Abstract

Authority control is a vital part of providing students and faculty with adequate access to collections in university libraries. Although many large research libraries routinely maintain authority control, small and medium-sized university libraries find it challenging to meet rising user expectations and provide adequate access in an online environment through appropriate authority work. The smaller libraries have to provide persuasive data to demonstrate to their library administrations that tight staffing situations make it difficult to perform in-house maintenance on authority work and keep up with the dynamic and constant changes of new headings for bibliographic records. This article offers a planning process on an authority control project at a medium-sized university library.

The Lowdown on Automated Vendor Supplied Authority Control

“…[ For academic and research libraries, performing authority control is an expensive, time consuming, labor intensive, and integral part of cataloging. 1 Many technical services managers persistently seek to reduce the costs of authority control in staff time and money. Throughout re-Althea Aschmann is Head of Cataloging, University Libraries, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA (E-mail: aschmann@vt.edu).…”

Coping with the storm

“…BFM is, therefore, only triggered by revised headings being used in new bibliographic records. However, according to Zhang (2001), in order to maintain the currency and consistency of local catalog, libraries must update existing NARs and headings in local catalog whenever their counterparts are changed in LCNAF, in addition to validating new headings coming in everyday against the national file. Due to the hit-and-miss effort in catching NAR updates, it is not uncommon to have both NARs and headings in bibliographic records in MSUL catalog that are not in sync with their counterparts in LCNAF.…”

Name Authority Work Today

“…6 Zhang noted that while authority work is routine for large research libraries, it has been more challenging for small and medium-size academic libraries. 7 She went on to state that even in large research libraries the levels of control vary.…”