INSERT LINK TO MSWG DOCUMENTATION WHEN READY for prospective consideration
BACKGROUND
Upon migration to Alma, Harvard will be using Alma's automated authority control process. This process attempt to link every access point to an LC authority record. The Alma Resource Management Working Group has done significant testing of this feature and found that it works well about 98% of the time. This feature will be extremely helpful in keeping our headings up to date. For example, we currently use MARS to inform us when a death date has been added to an author in the LC record. We then have to go into Aleph and correct hundreds of headings either manually, or in small batches. With Alma, if an authority changes, all our corresponding bibliographic headings will automatically change.
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In contrast to OCLC, in Alma the headings, even if they are unqualified, will be automatically linked to an authority record, as long as the heading exactly matches a 1XX or 4XX on a single authority record. The matching (or controlling in OCLC terms) happens when a record gets saved to the server. Then during the night, the headings that matched a 4XX in the LC record gets flipped to the 1XX field. Therefore, there is the possibility of headings a heading being incorrectly flipped if the bib heading was for a different person than the NAR to which the bib matched via the 4XX.
For example, a book on cats has the author, QuintanaGraham, IQ. There is this authority record:
- 100 Quintana100 Graham, IsabelQueenie
- 400 QuintanaGraham, I.Q
- 670 I only ever write about medicine, 2018
There is an NAR that will match. The bib heading Graham, Q will match the NAR above due to the 4XX. However this NAR is for a doctor, who is NOT the same person as the person who writes about cats.
As you can surmise, if the headings are qualified (by with $b, $c, $d, etc.or $q) the chances chance that they would match to the correct NAR are is high. However, Aleph has 4.5 If they are unqualified, there is some risk that they may match to a differently entity via the 4XX. Aleph has over 9 million unqualified headings. We The Alma RWMG tested a set of around 7000 about 7,000 unqualified headings, and we found that only 2% matched a 4XX in the NAF, and only .02% matched a different entity. So, the grand majority of unqualified headings will match the correct entity.
However, we are still trying to be cautious. Some folks who work in Special collections have asked us to exclude their retrospective records from this process. The way we hope to do this is to add $c (Harvard local name) to the headings on these records, so that the headings will be prevented from matching a record in the NAF.
Since I know that there are few surnames in CJK languages, we wondered if we might also want to exclude HYL records from this process. Likewise we wanted to alert Judaica and Middle East, in case there were certain issues at stake for these languages.
SUMMARY
For our retrospective data:
- You can opt to have all bib. records where HYL, or Judaica or Middle East is a holdings treated so that ANY unqualified headings will have $c (Harvard local name) added to them. Please note that this means that even if the name is correctly controlled to an NAR in OCLC, the same 1XX/7XX in Alma will have $c (Harvard local name) added to it.
- You can choose to leave your data as it is. The headings will then go through the Alma authority control process. The resulting reports will be too long for us to review them, as we will have 4.5 million unqualified headings being matched to NARs. However, from our sample only .02% were linking incorrectly, so most headings either don’t match at all, or match correctly to an NAR.
For our prospective data:
- You should be careful whenever you add an unqualified name to a bib. record. MSWG will be issuing some guidance in this area soon. Any unqualified name will run the risk of being linked to a future NAR that may not necessarily represent the entity on your bib. record. You can always choose to add a qualifier to your names to make them more unique, if you think this is a problem.
- Prospectively you will be able to scan the authority matching output report, so you will be able to check if headings matched the correct entities, and add a qualifier to disassociate your name from the authority record, if necessary.
SCOPE OF WORK
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As such, we put together a set of unqualified names at higher risk of matching to the wrong entity, such as CJK records where surnames are fewer, or special collections records with added entries with relator terms such as Former owner.
For this set, we will be adding a qualifier to any headings that match a 4XX in the NAF such that the Alma authority control process does not flip them. The qualifier in subfield c will be: (Harvard local name). This will be done prior to the Alma migration. This qualifier is not recommended for prospective cataloging. The Metadata Standards group will be issuing a document on how to qualify names prospectively when they match NAF 4XX headings.
PROCESS
Identify appropriate set of headings to compare to NAF:
- Fields included: 100, 600, 700
- Definition of unqualified name heading: contains a $a but not any of: b,c,d,q$b $c $d $q.
- Excluded:
- Any unqualified names on PCC/DLC records
- HUA theses from last several years. A qualifier was added via batch based on data in 502.
- Included: unqualified names for with these categoriesattributes:
- Heading included includes $5
- Heading included includes $e with one of these values (case-insensitive)(list compiled based on record counts):
- Former owner
- Printer
- Ill.
- Ed.
- Collector
- Tr.
- Engraver
- Library Bib had library holdings for: HYL, HOU, POE, THE
- Language of bib: Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, Persian, Kurdish
- Total number of headings: 1.7 million
Send list of headings to Backstage Library Works. They compared headings to NAF and provided a report of all headings that matched a 4XX.
- Match rate was < 2%, about 29,000 headings.
Add qualifier to these headings via a batch process. Qualifier is $c (Harvard local name).
FUTURE
After the Alma migration, staff can work with LTS to remove these qualifiers from sets of alma records at any time after migrationrefer to new MSWG policy re: qualifing headings when they conflict with NARrecords, if appropriate.
For prospective cataloging of unqualified names, refer to forthcoming Metadata Standards guidelines regarding name qualification when a heading matches to a NAR 4XX headings.