Authority Control & Harvard Libraries

Owned by Dunlap, Jennifer
Jan 20, 2021
2 min read

(DRAFT IN PROGRESS)

Statistics for Authority Work & Bibliographic Maintenance:

Harvard keeps monthly statistics of authority activity, some of which can be sourced from OCLC statistics. NACO catalogers are required to report their stats to the PCC (Program for Cooperative Cataloging) monthly. Sometimes, the creation of a new authority record or upgrade of an existing authority record requires both bibliographic maintenance in Alma, and reporting changes to OCLC and/or LC. Many special formats have their own BM requirements, like the NACO music project.


Index Resolution & Authority Record Maintenance

  • Alma's authority control is aggressive, and has been known to flip unqualified names incorrectly; check earlier versions of a record if a heading seems odd, or is linked to an incorrect authority record.
  • Catalogers are strongly encouraged to avoid creating unqualified headings; for specific guidance, please see the Metadata Standards Working Group document:
  • Catalogers are responsible for cleaning up split files of fewer than 10 records; split files larger than 10 records should be reported to Houghton's database management librarian (Vernica) to resolve the issue or liaise with LTS.
  • Remember to browse names in the subject indexes; catalogers should browse names AND subjects in Hollis as well, while Alma is correcting sorting problems with $q, etc
  • Catalogers should forward any perceived authority problems, or corrections/additions to National authority records, to the Head of the Rare Book Team.


/wiki/spaces/ITSadmin/pages/41367219

When Harvard migrated to Alma from Aleph, the difference in how authorities were handled spawned several projects. The /wiki/spaces/LibraryTech/pages/37490679 created in Aleph was saved, researched, and is gradually being processed into Alma. The Alma Authority Control Tasklist (ACTL) generated monthly by Alma is optimized by LTS, and processed by a committee of specialists.