The Committee is composed of a maximum of five members drawn from a cross-section of the consortium S. McMillen (UHM), S. Sakamoto (Law), S. Ouchi (UHM), L. Maruyama (LCC), R. Horie (UHM).
12/20/01 N. Sack (UHM) replaces S. Sakamoto.
Major charge:
Voyager has been described as a system best suited to cataloging
workflows that do the authority work before rather than after cataloging.
The Subcommittee will develop guidelines for pre-cataloging authority
work for libraries. It will also make recommendations with respect to
authority database clean-up and maintenance such as use of canned
reports, distribution of work, authority record de-duping profiles.
Background:
We inherit a Voyager database much richer in capacity for authority
control than the one we left. It includes a combined authority record
database of ca. 90% (LTI's claim) of the name, subject, and series
headings contributed to the shared database by all UH System sites'
libraries. It has a subject authorities database of all Library of
Congress subject authority records as of Dec. 31, 1999, and 2000 update
files waiting to be loaded. In order to best serve PAC users at all UH
System libraries, we must provide reliable access to our library
collections by maintaining the accuracy and consistency of access points.
Recommended general authority work guidelines:
Establish and use headings for authority-controlled names, series and
uniform title access points according to rules for headings in AACR2.
Use and construct authority controlled subject headings according to rules
and usages of LCSH.
Correct wrong headings to authorized forms when practicable. Remember -- it's a shared database, and we share the responsibility for its accuracy.
Use the Authority Validation feature of Voyager cataloging when working on bibs. (i.e. don't check the "Bypass authority control validation" box in your Options > Preferences.) It will at least alert you to obvious conflicts or variations in headings, or report if no underlying authority record exists.
Reality check:
In theory it makes sense to verify and create authority records as early
as possible in the cataloging process to keep the database clean and
reliable. But UH System libraries vary widely in the technical and human
resources available to them, past experience with authority control on
UHCARL or elsewhere, and access to national authority database (LCNA).
Very little training has been devoted to importing, creating or editing
authority records. As a practical matter, some sites may not be able to
participate in shared database authority heading clean-up or contribute
new authority records on a regular basis.
Libraries with access to authority records in OCLC and RLIN:
General practice: Verify incoming headings in a new bib record in
Voyager, or through authority files in OCLC and RLIN; if not found,
establish new headings per AACR2r.
Libraries with no access to bibliographic utilities:
General practice: Verify incoming new headings in a new bib record in
Voyager; if not found, establish new headings per AACR2r. If
practicable, verify headings in Library of Congress WebPAC, or other
reliable WebPAC or authorities database.
Libraries with access to authority records in OCLC and RLIN:
Import or create new authority records if cross-references are needed for
the new heading. Most personal name headings would not need an authority
record, many corporate headings (especially government agencies) do.
Libraries with no access to bibliographic utilities:
Create new Voyager authority records if cross-references are needed for
the new heading. Use judgment in determining whether our PAC users are
likely to search for the heading under variant forms.
The GLOBAL CHANGE function will not be enabled when Cataloging module first goes live (a System Dept. decision). We will have to wait until after new ILS shakedown before we can study and plan how cataloging reports will be used and how authority clean-up will be assigned.
A complication of global change is that it does NOT work unless an authority record exists for the precise string which you wish changed. Unless you construct a new authority for each entire subject phrase (term + all subdivisions), your subject headings will become uncontrolled. We need to sketch out a workflow for checking 6XX's to see if additional authority records need to be created for subject strings before global change is run.
Apparent heading proliferation:
Voyager quirk to be aware of: Duplicate headings being produced in
Voyager when you save a record more than once (click on the sailboat).
An experiment with Reporter to see the cataloging reports "Unauthorized
Subject Headings" and "Unauthorized Name Headings" showed that it appears
that entries are added EVERY time you hit the sailboat to save. It looks
like there is no deduping of the entries just a "adding on" to the end of
a very long list. Suggestion: Endeavor trainers advised that catalogers
save to a workfile and not the live database until you are done editing
the record.
Training:
Would we want to have a round of training sessions on authority work?
There could be 4 broad levels or stages:
Authority record import/replace profile decisions:
There still needs to be testing and establishment of a systemwide
authority import/replace profile (similar in function to the bib
import/replace profiles) before any authority records can be imported
from OCLC, for instance. Right now the default AuthAddConditional does
not work. It returns a "too many duplicates" message after trying to
file a new authority record even if there are no matching ones in the database.
Shall we propose a single Unconditional profile for authority records? Presumably authority records are permanent. But it is likely catalogers would want to replace a local authority record with an LCNA record on occasion, but preserve local data (such as series treatment decisions). Need to examine how headings are linked to authority records, and what happens if the authority record is overlayed.