AUTHORITY CONTROL/ACTIVITIES
2003-2004
Routine authority control activities continued in NOTIS in FY 04 and largely involved a lot of hard work to prepare for migration to ALEPH including reviewing authority issues in the various subset data loads. However, after implementing ALEPH in May 2004, and as we anticipated new strategies for effective authority control in ALEPH, we were able to begin authority maintenance in various areas of the ALEPH database, as appropriate.
Other authority activities in the Department include NACO and SACO.
- Worked on identifying series authorities
that would need to be kept in the local ALEPH authority file (UFU10) by
adding (FU)Retain in UFU10 date series. These have included series we
treat differently from LC, series with some numbers classed together in
Dewey, and ones with order information on a serial record. The project
was started in Oct. 2003.
- Spent ca. 2 months working on foreign language
diacritics and [] problems on NOTIS records prior to migration of the
records. Reviewed with FCLA the Unicode/NOTIS conversion table.
- Worked on other null values that included
the degrees, minutes, and seconds on map records.
- Started the deletion of series in the UFU10
ALEPH authority file that match the LC treatment. Monitored their linkage
to the LCProd file. Corrected split files that occurred due to the lack
of |n and |p on some of the series tracings on the bibliographic records.
Also have used the NOTIS k490 search to trace many series that were not
traced prior to 1981 by LC. This provided a better indication of our holdings
on series titles that would be traced if we processed any current receipts
in the series.
- Deleted series from UFU10 ALEPH Authority
file that involve series changed since March 2004 and have held a printed
copy to help FCLA monitor the upcoming loads of the weekly LC updates
- Worked on reviewing authority issues in
the various subset loads. Provided input on other topics such as call
number indexing, etc. Provided FCLA with examples for ExLibris.
- Participated in the authority meetings held
by FCLA. Attended monthly Aleph migration meetings when possible.
- Paul Lowry continued his work on creating
either series/serials bibliographic records and/or series authorities
for classed together series. He also corrected headings as necessary.
- Jackie Heiland continued with a 15% assignment
that included working with the New Headings report for the UD processing
unit. She continued to use Catalyst to merge name authority records for
Documents. She continued working with correcting typos from the Ballard
misspellings list after migrating to ALEPH.
- Gerald continued his responsibility for
the updates to LC authority records (except series) and the New Headings
list. He worked on serials/series local treatment problems in the database
as a part of the RS Serials/Series Problems Solving Group. Leading up
to migration he worked on creating a test record containing diacritics
in NOTIS to check on proper data migration to ALEPH.
He prepared and taught many classes in a lead role as ALEPH cataloging trainer. He created guidelines for "Authorities Checking in ALEPH" and taught an introductory class based on those guidelines in June soon after switching to production in ALEPH.
- Statistics for the Unit's activity are subsumed in the Social Sciences Unit of Contributed Cataloging.
Prepared by: Priscilla
Williams
