[rak-list] Authority Control/OCLC

[Charles Croissant]

Dear colleagues,

Responding to Mr. Jim Cole's earlier message:
When speaking of OCLC, it is very important to remember that OCLC is a
cooperative to which thousands of libraries contribute records (and
records which vary in quality), and that it has been in existence for
some 30 years now. Not all of the records it contains were formulated
according to AACR2; there are still a considerable number of older
records in WorldCat that were formulated according to AACR2's very
different predecessor, AACR1. OCLC's Quality Control section works very
hard to locate and correct outdated or mistaken headings, but it is a
huge job, and will always remain a work in progress. Certainly there are
inconsistencies and mistakes. To my mind, these are outweighed by the
huge advantages of having so many good records available in OCLC.

I believe that authority control in OCLC will improve. OCLC is taking a
very important step this year and is moving to the linked-records model
already in use in most German libraries (up till now, authority records
and bibliographic records have not been linked to each other in the OCLC
database). To accomplish this, OCLC has purchased software from Oracle
and from Western Libraries Network. This is an enormous undertaking, as
there are currently close to 49 million bibliographic records in OCLC,
and the National Authority File, which will serve as the basis for
linking, currently contains circa 5.6 million authority records, with
hundreds, even thousands of records, being added each day. (Please note
that the National Authority File contains both personal name and
corporate name records, which are searchable over separate indexes).

In the examples mentioned by Mr. Cole, the heading
WOI-TV (Television station : Ames, Iowa)
is the correct AACR2 heading and thus is present in the National
Authority File.

The heading
Ames, Iowa.  Television station WOI-TV. 
is formulated according to the old rules of AACR1 and is thus no longer
valid. Well-trained catalogers will recognize that it is an AACR1
heading by the fact that the corporate body is entired subordinately
after the place name. This practice ended when AACR2 was introduced. 

The OCLC record in which the above heading is found, OCLC #4483769, is
identified in the OCLC system as a "pre-AACR2" record, that is, a record
formulated according to cataloging rules that are no longer valid. This
identification is made in the fixed field of the record, in the position
labeled "Desc" (abbreviation for "Description"). When the value
appearing after the label "Desc" is a blank, this indicates that the
record is a pre-AACR2 record. Records that are formulated according to
the rules of AACR2 receive a value of "a" following the label "Desc": .
Thus,
Desc: [blank] means, "This record was not formulated according to
AACR2."
Desc: a       means, "This record was formulated according to AACR2."

The other examples quoted by Mr. Cole are subject headings. As subject
headings, they are not formulated according to AACR2 (which deals purely
with bibliographic description and with personal and corporate name
headings), but rather according to the rules for subject headings
developed by the Library of Congress over many decades. These rules have
changed over time. In the case of Germany, they have also had to change
as the political situation in Germany has changed. In our discussions,
it is important to remember the distinction between bibliographic
headings (personal name and corporate body headings) and subject
headings.

mfG,
Charles Croissant

Jim E Cole wrote:
> 
> Dear Colleagues,
> 
>         I am by no means an expert on OCLC's efforts to control headings in
> its WorldCat database.  I do know, however, that the headings found its
> authority file are at least not as well linked to the to headings in
> WorldCat as one would like--and hope--them to be.  Thus for, instance, the
> authorized heading for the city in which I live is
> 
>         Ames (Iowa)
> 
> and the heading for the television station formerly owned by the university
> here is
> 
>         WOI-TV (Television station : Ames, Iowa)
> 
> Although both headings are found in the OCLC authority file, one
> nevertheless finds a record in OCLC WorldCat with the heading
> 
>         Ames, Iowa.  Television station WOI-TV.  [OCLC record 4483769]
> 
> This, of course, has the television station not only incorrectly established
> subordinately to the city name, but uses the wrong form of the heading for
> the city!
> 
>         Similarly, although the heading for "West Germany" is established in
> the authority file as
> 
>         Germany (West)
> 
> one still finds "Germany (Federal Republic, 1949- )" used as either a
> heading or as the initial part of a heading over 1350 times in WorldCat.
> The headings range from just
> 
>         Germany (Federal Republic, 1949- )  [OCLC record 5014648]
> 
> to such things as
> 
>         Germany (Federal Republic, 1949- ).  Meteorologisches Amt fuer
> Nordwestdeutschland.  [OCLC record 4520359] (Pardon my substitution of the
> of the "e" for the umlaut in "fuer"!)
> 
>         The OCLC authority file itself has a record for the Meteorologisches
> Amt, entered directly under its own name:
> 
>         Meteorologisches Amt fuer Nordwestdeutschland.
> 
> This, however, did not affect the older heading in WorldCat.
> 
>         Similar problems exist, of course, for "East Germany".  For
> instance, even though the authority file's heading for the Staatsrat is
> 
>         Germany (East).  Staatsrat
> 
> one nevertheless finds the heading
> 
>         Germany (Democratic Republic, 1949- ).  Staatsrat
> 
> used in OCLC WorldCat [OCLC record 27121430]
> 
>         These are just a few--and easily found--examples of mistakes and
> inconsistencies and conflicts with the authority file that are to be found
> in the OCLC WorldCat database.
> 
> ---
> Jim Cole, Editor-in-Chief
> THE SERIALS LIBRARIAN
> http://www.ameshomeschool.org/serialslibrarian

-- 
Charles R. Croissant
Catalog Librarian
Pius XII Memorial Library
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO  63108
(314) 977-3098
croisscr at slu.edu