Presented by Rick Block, Columbia University
Summary by Penny Schroeder, Bowdoin College
With high energy, good humor and amusing illustrations Rick Block, Head of Original and Special Materials Cataloging at Columbia University, opened the NELINET program on authority control. Sponsored by NELINET's Collections and Technical Services Advisory Committee, the conference, entitled Authority Control: Why It Matters, sought to spread the word of the increasing need and importance of authority control. To this end, Block's kickoff presentation on Authority Control: What It Is and Why It Matters set the mood for the entire conference.
In keeping with his current New York position and residence, Block began with an illustration of New York as an authority problem; is it a city, a county, a colony, a state, or a state of mind? Clearly, authority control is a broad issue not confined to library catalogs.
In addition to his full time library position at Columbia, Block serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University. Calling on this experience, he offered the NELINET group one of the tasks he assigns his students in his introductory class on bibliographic control. The assignment is designed to underscore the importance of authority control and quality cataloging.
Using BOBCAT, the New York University catalog, Block asks his students a series of questions, among them: (1) Who is the author of The City and Social Theory? Who is the author of A Joyful Noise: a Celebration of New Orleans Music? (2) What is Karen Blixen's pseudonym? (3) What is the real name of Buffalo Bill (approaching the catalog as if you didn't know)? The search results of multiple headings for the same person, unconnected pseudonyms and real names and the use of unauthorized headings indicate real problems for users of the catalog.
In Block's words "authority control is: the process of maintaining consistency in the verbal form used to represent an access point in a catalog; the further process of providing interconnections among names, works, and subjects which display any significant relationship; and the process of ensuring that every entry - name, uniform title, series, or subject - that is selected as an access point for the catalog is unique and does not conflict, by being identical, with any other entry that is already in the catalog or may be included at a later date". He further states that the goals of authority control are to "facilitate the identifying and collocating functions of the catalog" so that "users can assume that a consistent term or phrase will refer to a particular name, title or subject, and that variations will be brought together under the one form". Block pointed out that Charles Amni Cutter back in 1876 wrote that the three functions of a catalog are finding, collocating and evaluating. Cutter further conceived of the notion of a "syndetic catalog". Syndetic means connective, and Cutter defined such a catalog as "that kind of dictionary catalog which binds its entries together by means of cross-references so as to form a whole". Without the syndetic function of authority control a catalog is not a true catalog!
What needs to be controlled? - subjects, personal names, corporate names, geographic names and titles. Personal names are uniquely troublesome. Some 66% of all authors write only one book in one edition and pose few problems of control. However, the other 34% present an array of difficulties from pseudonyms to compound and varied surnames to married names vs maiden names, etc. In a revealing and amusing slide, Block presented the authority record for Elizabeth Taylor.
To further illuminate the issue, the name "Peter Brown" searched in Columbia University's catalog, aka CLIO, resulted in the following: 29 headings, 9 cross-references, 18 different people, 73 titles and 3 incorrect headings, of which 2 were order records. To make things even worse many Peter Browns wrote on similar topics at relatively similar times, but all were different. Authority control matters!
Block stated that authority work "includes the research work and intellectual effort involved in creating and updating authority records; determines if a relationship exists between names or subject heading terms; establishes and links the names that could refer to the same person; establishes relationships between subject heading terms; and includes recording the authority data of preferred form, variants, history, scope and links to other authority records". Steps involved in authority work include: researching for variants; choosing one among many; analyzing parts of the term; adding, omitting or modifying the term; handling special language cases; linking the used and the unused and documenting the process.
The result of this authority work is an authority record that shows a heading in the form established for use in the catalog; lists cross-references to be made to and from the heading and cites the sources consulted in establishing the heading. A set of such records constitutes an authority file that lists the names, series and subject headings established and used in a catalog and the links to related subject headings, titles and names.
Authority files enable efficient cataloging and searching, reduce effort in entering headings, avoid duplication of entries and improve the quality of catalogs. Block enunciates four functions of authority files: (1) authority - supports consistency of headings; (2) finding - provides links from variants and other authorized headings; (3) information - shows usage and scope of headings; and (4) maintenance - supports error detection and correction.
Block illustrated problems with corporate names, subject terms and titles, each clearly and often amusingly revealing the need for authority control. Among these were the problem of synonyms, series, popular vs. technical terms, etc. He displayed eleven different ways to write a date as an example of the need for control.
The work of shared authority files among networks avoids the extra work of duplicate records and widens the sources for matching records. Block listed and affirmed various cooperative authority control projects underway: PCC, BIBCO/CONSER, NACO, NACO funnel projects, SACO, and SACO funnel projects.
It is plain to see that authority control matters to all involved with and dependent upon library catalogs. Public service librarians benefit from authority control via the increased quality of these catalogs; by the more effective searching the syndetic structure of the catalog delivers; and by the authority controlled catalog offers reference librarians to answer some reference questions right from the start. Advantages of authority control include: the collecting, recording and maintaining of authoritative forms of headings; the linking of variant forms of headings; consistency and verification in bibliographic records, the ability to automatically verify headings, and the capability to globally change and correct headings.
Block ended his presentation by a witty return to his control problem of New York. It could be New York (N.Y.); Manhattan (New York, N.Y.); New York (State); New York County (N.Y.); Berkshire South; or Boston's Biggest Suburb! Authority control matters!
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Updated November 15, 1999