Authority Control Terminology

1. AACR2: AACR2 stands for Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second edition. It is published jointly by the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (in the UK). AACR2 is designed for use in the construction of catalogues and other lists in general libraries of all sizes. The rules cover the description of, and the provision of access points for, all library materials commonly collected at the present time. (wp) 2. AAT: Is a three letter acronym that in the authority world refers to the “Art & Architecture Thesaurus”. It is a controlled vocabulary used for describing items of art, architecture, and material culture. The AAT contains generic terms, such as "cathedral," but no proper names, such as "Cathedral of Notre Dame." The AAT is used by, among others, museums, art libraries, archives, catalogers, and researchers in art and art history. The AAT is a thesaurus in compliance with ISO and NISO standards including ISO 2788 and ISO 5964. Final editorial control of the AAT is maintained by the Getty Vocabulary Program. (wp) 3. Alternate Graphic Representation: The 880 tag of the bibliographic record. Representation of a field in a vernacular format (in a different script) of another field in the same record. Field 880 is linked to the associated regular field by subfield $6 (Linkage). A subfield $6 in the associated field also links that field to the 880 field. The data in field 880 may be in more than one script. (m21) 4. Annotated Card Headings: Another term for Library of Congress Children’s Subject Headings. Children’s subject headings are a separate file within the LC subject file. They are designated by a second indicator of 1 in the 650 tag. (ac) 5. ASCII: American Standard Code for Information interchange (ASCII) is a character encoding based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with text. Most modern character encodings—which support many more characters than did the original—have a historical basis in ASCII. (wp) 6. Author Affiliations: Part of the Table of Content Enrichment (TOC) services, Author affiliation information is gathered from the book dust jackets to further enrich your data. Typically data is added to a 9XX field of the bibliographic record. (mpg) 7. Authority Cleanup: Authority Cleanup is a wide variety of automated routines that update and correct individual subfields and contiguous pairs of subfields. These corrections are based on a number of subfield update files maintained by MARS 2.0 authority librarians. Routines included in this process are as follows: (mpg) Update Obsolete Subdivisions Correct Typographical Errors Expand Abbreviations Direct-to-indirect Geographic Conversions Chronological Conversion Delete Obsolete Subdivisions Retain Selected Subdivisions Correct Spacing, Capitalization, and Punctuation 8. Authority Control: Authority Control is a term used in library and information science to refer to the practice of creating and maintaining headings for bibliographic material in a catalog. Authority control fulfills two important functions. First, it enables catalogers to disambiguate items with similar or identical headings. For example, two authors who happen to have published under the same name can be distinguished from each other by adding middle initials, birth and/or death (or flourished, if these are unknown) dates, or a descriptive epithet to the heading of one (or both) authors. Second, authority control is used by catalogers to collocate materials that logically belong together, although they present themselves differently. For example, authority records are used to establish uniform titles, which can collocate all versions of a given work together even when they are issued under different titles. (wp) 9. Authority file segmentation: Authority file segmentation is the segmentation of your authority records by the library’s integrated library system. Segmentation can be determined by authority type, LC, LC Children, MeSh, Canadian, or segmentation can be determined by usage, name, subject, series title. It is the library’s integrated library software that dictates file segmentation. (mpg) 10. Authority file source: Authority file source refers the where the automated authority control vendor is getting authority records for your master authority file. There are two sources your authority file comes from when doing automated authority control. The first is when a file is created through the automated process as each authorized bibliographic heading is matched against national headings. The source then is the matched and unmatched headings from the library’s own database. The second source is when a library has an existing authority file and the file is re-mastered to bring it into the authority vendor’s master file and updated authority records are re-distributed to the library. (mpg) 11. Authority Matching: The second phase of MARS 2.0 Authority Control is Authority Matching. Authority matching compares each authority controlled heading in your bibliographic records against authority record headings from any of a number of national and other authority files. Authority matching uses the headings in authority records to update or correct the bibliographic headings so they conform to current standards. A matching algorithm is used to enhance the matching process. Authorized headings and see from tracings of the national authority record are matched against to produce updated authority headings with corresponding national authority records. (mpg) 12. Authority Records: The most common way of enforcing authority control in a bibliographic catalog is to set up a separate index of authority records, which relates to and governs the headings used in the main catalog. This separate index is often referred to as an "authority file." It contains an indexable record of all decisions made by catalogers in a given library (or -- as is increasingly the case -- cataloguing consortium), which catalogers consult when making, or revising, decisions about headings. It is to be remembered that the function of authority files is essentially organizational, rather than informational. That is to say, they (ideally) contain a sufficient amount of information to establish a given author or title as unique, while excluding information that, while perhaps interesting to a reader, does not contribute to this goal. (wp) 13. Authority Record Distribution: see Authority File Segmentation 14. Authority Record Status: The 05 Byte of the authority leader tells what the status of the authority record is. The following codes are used to determine the status. (m21) a - Increase in encoding level c - Corrected or revised d - Deleted n - New o - Obsolete s - Deleted; heading split into two or more headings x - Deleted; heading replaced by another heading 15. Authority update frequency: How often a library should run Notification Services in their library is based on the following. • Frequency—How often does your organization’s authority file need to be updated? • Resources—Does your organization have the staff to upload changed authority records at the frequency you chose? • Cost—Is frequency important enough to incur additional cost (weekly and monthly delivery are more expensive)? Most libraries under 500,000 bib records do not need to run Notification Services more than four times a year. A good way to measure how frequent you need this service done is to compare it to how often you add bibliographic records. If you are adding about 5,000 records a quarter then both Current Cataloging and Notification Services should be run every quarter. If you are adding about 5,000 bibliographic records once a year then consider running Notification and Current Cataloging Services once a year. Backstage Library Works can establish a schedule that responds to local requirements. (mpg) 16. Authorized Heading (form): Also called Established Heading, an authorized heading is the 1xx of authority record. It is the version of the heading that is to be used to represent the authority record. Variations of the authorized heading will be found in the 4xx of the authority record. An authority record in which field 100-155 contains an established name or subject. Heading refers to the form of name (or title) that the cataloguer has chosen as the form to represent this data, or the authorized form. (wp, ac, m21) 17. Automated Authority Control: A computer generated process that cleans up, matches and then delivers nationally recognized authority records. This process will replace (flip) existing bibliographic headings under authority control with the nationally recognized authorized heading found in the 1xx of the authority record. Both updated bibliographic headings and corresponding authority records are delivered to the library for uploading. (ac) 18. Auxiliary File: The MARS 2.0 Auxiliary File contains records with additional validated headings and additional cross-references not present in national authority files. The additional cross-references convert incorrect or obsolete forms to the authorized form of the headings. Authority records from this file are used during MARS 2.0 Authority Matching only and are not distributed to libraries. (mpg) 19. B.A.R.E Rules: Backstage Rules Engine (B.A.R.E.) Java based computer software used by the MARS 2.0 software to bring bibliographic data to current MARC21 standards. MARS 2.0 supports MARC changes distributed in MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data updates. B.A.R.E processing updates many elements in MARC bibliographic records to conform with current MARC 21 standards, proving increased consistency within your bibliographic file. (mpg) 20. BIBCO – Monographic Bibliographic Record Program of the PCC: In October 1995, PCC-member libraries began participating in this newest program. Many of the participants were former NCCP (National Coordinated Cataloging Program) libraries. BIBCO members are responsible for contributing full or core level bibliographic records. These records are identified as PCC records and notable for their complete authority work (both descriptive and subject), a national level call number (such as LC classification or NLM classification), and at least one subject access point drawn from nationally recognized thesauri such as LCSH, MeSH, etc., as appropriate. (google) 21. Bibliographic Control Number: Control number assigned by the organization creating, using, or distributing the record. The MARC code identifying whose system control number is present in field 001 is contained in field 003 (Control Number Identifier). An organization using a record of another organization may move the incoming control number from field 001 (and the control number identifier from field 003) to field 035 (System Control Number), 010 (Library of Congress Control Number), or 016 (National Bibliographic Agency Control Number), as appropriate, and place its own system control number in field 001 (and its control number identifier in field 003). (m21) 22. Bibliographic File Distribution: After MARS automated processing the library can choose to have all of their bibliographic records distributed back to them or only changed bibliographic records. They can further delimit the changes by selecting a subset of changes. The options they have to choose from are, Authority Cleanup Subfields Updates, Heading flips, Heading splits, Heading tag flips, Significant heading changes, headings changed during manual review and custom changes. (mpg) 23. Bibliographic Validation: The first phase of MARS 2.0 Authority Control is Bibliographic Validation. Bibliographic records sometimes require cleanup due to older practices (AACR1 vs AACR2). The automated process of cleaning up bibliographic records is called Bibliographic Validation. Elements of the bibliographic record are checked against current MARC21 standards and then updated when process allows. MARS 2.0 makes changes in over 100 different MARC fields within your bibliographic record. Standard MARC21 Validation covers the following: (mpg) • Leader is present and correctly structured • Directory is present and correctly structured • No record exceeds 99,999 characters. Including bib records larger than 99,999 byte maximum size prevents successful processing of the input files. Records cannot be segmented (broken apart into multiple physical records) to reach the maximum size limit. These records will be output as potentially corrupt for the library to review • No field exceeds 9,999 characters (MARC21 directory limitation) • If a record exceeds the character or field size it is not processed. If there is a large number of rejected records our programmers will contact the library project manager to determine a course of action • All records contain the following standard MARC delimiters: • Record terminators (ASCII 1D16) • Field terminators (ASCII 1E16) • Subfield delimiters (ASCII 1F16) • All records contain valid characters (either in MARC8 or UTF8) • Any null characters (hex 00) are changed to spaces when records are loaded • MARS 2.0 will also delete empty fields or subfields as records are loaded 24. Blind Authority Records: A blind authority record is an authority in the library’s database that does not connect to or is not associated with a bibliographic authorized heading. On a library’s ILS system the blind reference will either not be included in the authority index or will be included in the index with zero hits (bibliographic connections) associated with it. When an authority file is in place on an ILS system only the authorized heading 1XX or the see also reference 5XX of the authority record can be a blind reference. The nature of the see reference 4XX always points to the authorized heading 1XX and can not be a blind reference though on some ILS systems a search for on the see reference will have the same result as a search on the authorized heading. That is no bibliographic record will be found. (ac,mpg) 25. Brackets see Square Brackets 26. Brief MARC Authority Record: A brief MARC authority record is an authority record created from the heading in the bibliographic record. At the time of creation these headings are not tied to a national authority record. The brief MARC record is designed for temporary use to be replaced by a nationally authorized heading when available. Most ILS systems create the “brief” MARC record as a link to the existing authority heading found in the authorized field of the bibliographic record, 1XX, 4XX, 6XX, 7XX and 8XX. The MARS 2.0 Authority process also creates brief MARC records adding them to the library’s “Master File” in order to attempt to match the authority heading to a national authority record at a later date. (mpg) 27. Byte: In computer science a byte (pronounced "bite"), is a unit of measurement of information storage, most often consisting of eight bits. (wp) 28. Canadiana: see NLC Canadiana Files 29. Chronological conversion: MARS 2.0 Authority Cleanup uses a table to convert chronological headings ($y) to their correct form. Corrections are made to spelling and punctuation as well as to format: (mpg)