To weigh in on this, I absolutely think authority control work continues to be critical, since there are many people with similar names and making sure you have the right one is hard enough without authority control. I was just looking for a local author today in our online catalog and without authority control principles in force, it would have been much harder than it was – and as it was, I found an instance of the name that was outside the form established and plan to report it to the Cataloging Dept. to correct! J

As for Discovery systems … they have a LONG way to go and I never use ours for local searching. Looking forward to some improvements that are planned…

Eleanor I. Cook

Assistant Director for Discovery & Technology Services

Academic Library Services -- Joyner Library

East Carolina University

East Fifth Street

Greenville, NC 27858

252-328-2598

252-328-4834 fax

cooke@ecu.edu

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@list.uvm.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Oberg
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 9:44 AM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Authority work - is it still necessary?

Elena,

I am not so sure that traditional authority control is really that necessary, particularly if it is viewed as in the context of a local online catalog only. We use a discovery layer as our primary catalog. It has many shortcomings and I see it as, at best, a mixed benefit for our users. But it does lessen the primacy of a local online catalog and all that pertains to it, as least as for as our users are concerned.

This comment doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in the general principle and work of authority control. Rather, it’s a reflection of the increasingly mixed discovery environment in which we and our users exist.

Steve

On Jul 25, 2014, at 10:20 PM, Elena Romaniuk <eromaniu@uvic.ca> wrote:

In response to Mark Ehlert's question:

"Should we distinguish between "authority work" (the process of bringing bibliographic order to the catalog) and "authority control" (the outcome or goal of bringing bibliographic order to the catalog)?"

I meant both but should have said "authority control."

Elena

From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] on behalf of Mark K. Ehlert [ehler043@UMN.EDU]
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 4:19 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] Authority work - is it still necessary?

Elena Romaniuk <eromaniu@uvic.ca> wrote:

Your thoughts on the question: "Is doing authority work in our catalogues still necessary?"

Should we distinguish between "authority work" (the process of bringing bibliographic order to the catalog) and "authority control" (the outcome or goal of bringing bibliographic order to the catalog)?

Mark K. Ehlert Minitex
Coordinator University of Minnesota
Digitization, Cataloging & 15 Andersen Library
Metadata Education (DCME) 222 21st Avenue South
Phone: 612-624-0805 Minneapolis, MN 55455-0439
<http://www.minitex.umn.edu/>

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Steve Oberg
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Electronic Resources and Serials
Wheaton College (IL)
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