Authority Control

Scheduling

Processing time for limited review authority control is three weeks for databases containing 300,000 or fewer bibliographic records, four weeks for databases up to 800,000 records, and five weeks for databases of one million records. Scheduling for databases larger than one million records will be provided on request.

When offered, processing time for full review authority control for a database of 100,000 records is six weeks. As a planning guideline, allow one additional week for each 75,000 records, e.g., estimated processing time for a database of 250,000 records is eight weeks. Full review projects should be scheduled at least two months in advance of when the library's records are to be received at LTI.

Library databases are rarely available for processing at the time initially planned. Therefore, for scheduling purposes, the processing time for a job "starts" after two events occur: 1) receipt of a readable version of all the customer's machine-readable records in MARC format; and, 2) receipt of a completed Authority Control Work Specification Profile (WSP). The WSP should be completed and submitted online. Authority control options designated by the customer in the WSP, along with any attachments describing special instructions, becomes the official document describing what processing is to be performed. The WSP takes precedence over telephone and email communications.

While Your Records Are Being Authorized

During the period in which the library's bibliographic records are being authorized, staff should understand that no changes are to be made to catalog records. This is not the time to enhance records by adding local notes, secondary added entries, subjects, etc. When the post-processed bibliographic records are returned after authorization, any changes made to records will be lost as part of the "overlay" process. Also, this is not the time to conduct a "weeding" project--that should be done in advance of when the records are exported.

There is no need for libraries to export item records as item fields (e.g., 949 fields) when the only database service needed is authority control. This means that, while bibliographic record data is "frozen" during the time in which the records are being authorized, the library may continue to make changes to item records. For example, library staff can make changes to call numbers, location codes, barcode numbers, copy and volume information, or any other data contained in the item records. Based on the bibliographic record's local system control number, item records are going to be re-linked to catalog records when the authorized bibliographic records are loaded back into the database following authorization.

It follows that a library can continue to create new item records, as well as delete existing item records, while its bibliographic records are being authorized. Similarly, a library can continue to add new bibliographic records, along with associated item records, while the database is processed through authority control. The library will want to keep track of the date its bibliographic records were exported so that catalog records added after that date can be extracted for whatever continuing authority control service the library may wish to use.

There are certain situations when it is necessary for a library to export item records (i.e., formatted as item fields) along with its bibliographic records. The most common reason is that the library is migrating to another local system and it will be necessary to re-build the item fields as item records within the new local system. Occasionally a library will want to dedupe and authorize its bibliographic records at the same time. In this case item fields must reside in the exported bibliographic records or else item records will be "orphaned" when the bibliographic records are reloaded. Deduping a "live" database poses special problems and should only be done following close coordination between the library's local system vendor and the database vendor.

MARC-8 vs. UNICODE

LTI recommends that libraries use their ILS vendor's utility program to convert exported records to MARC-8 before sending files for authorization. However, we do offer an option to work directly with Unicode [UTF-8] encoded catalog records. At this time we return LC authority records only in MARC-8 and will continue that practice until LC begins to distribute authority records in Unicode. Internally, prior to matching headings against LC authority records, we first convert controlled headings from Unicode to MARC-8. Libraries planning to submit Unicode records should so advise LTI so that profile options are properly set.

LTI offers Continuing Authority Control Services to maintain the integrity of your catalog after batch authority control has been completed.

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