Name Authorities
Under Development
Notes from David
- Death Dates -- Posted 2/10/2006
- Effective immediately, the Library of Congress is beginning to add death dates to all those headings that have confused patrons for years. (You know, the ones where someone is known to be dead, yet we keep listing only the date of birth in our catalog.) Over time, personal names in the authority file will be revised to reflect this change.
- Please be aware when you’re cataloging in OCLC, that a controlled heading may not match what we have in our own catalog. This means that it’s all the more important to check headings in our local catalog, after downloading. When this is the case:
- If we don’t have an authority record in our catalog, download the revised one from OCLC.
- If we have an authority record in our catalog with the old form of the name, download the revised record from OCLC and have it overlay the existing authority record. This will update the heading wherever it appears.
- If you don’t know how to overlay authority records, just ask Karen or me; it’s easy.
- If you don’t feel up for the challenge, please let someone know who can then handle the update.
- In addition, IN ALL CASES, the heading will need to be changed on each bibliographic record in our catalog. Yes, it’s a pain, but it’s a great chance to practice "copy and paste." And keep reminding yourself how it will improve our database.
- If you find a changed authority record and there are more than 10-15 occurrences on bibliographic records in our catalog, don’t despair! Replace or add the changed authority record; then let me know, and I’ll change the headings on the bibliographic records globally.
- Death Dates -- Posted 2/15/2006
- We’ve already encountered a name with an added death date: John Paul II, Pope, 1920- has been changed to John Paul II, Pope, 1920-2005; Joy and I have revised our local authority and bibliographic records accordingly.
- Two issues came up that need to be addressed (of course .. there’s no erason to start with a simple one!):
- We had nine records with Pope John Paul as an author. We also had ca. 20 bibliographic records with him as a subject. Both sets need to be updated. Be sure to check for subject headings when revising a name heading.
- There was also a chapter in a book, of which he was the author, so his name appeared in subfield f in a 970 field. As you may know, headings in 970 fields are often tedious to edit, since we can’t typically copy and paste the heading from an authority record or from a MARC field in a bibliographic record into the 970 field without modification. (This is because 970 fields are not real MARC fields; OhioLINK made them up.) Names in 970 fields can be hard to find in a long list, and they require special editing (with all delimiters replaced with spaces), so it’s up to you whether you edit 970 fields or not.