Dear colleagues,
The Authority Control Interest Group had its Interest Group week meeting on Feb. 2. The recording is here: https://ala-events.zoom.us/rec/play/xhVYwwAjFAvhFlOCv_WzjzgfT30vlzsvz_-5HeFIWNqm_EXr3V5nHQ2tkbfc2rJgb-b2rddPotoR6U4R.iykEaCcCxpn-Mslm?startTime=1612292628000
There will be a follow-up meeting, in which we have a lightning round of presentations by five people on different projects that took place during the last year. The focus on these presentations is to highlight ways in which we took advantage of the lockdown to get work done, despite the challenging situation. Hopefully these projects will inspire others to look at the work they can also get done!
After the lightning round, we will offer time for questions and discussion. We would be delighted to hear about other projects that libraries are doing at their institutions. Let's share the inspiration!
The meeting will be from 1:00pm - 2:00pm Tuesday, February 16, 2021 Central Time. See below for how to get into the meeting. NOTE: No Reservations will be offered. However, the meeting will be recorded and the recording shared at a later time via the usual channels.
The presentations will be by:
Nathan Putnam from OCLC
Statistics of authority work over the course of the last year
Jessalyn Zoom from Library of Congress
Like many of you, we worked on some database cleanup projects during the pandemic. One of them is undifferentiated name authority records containing non-Latin script reference(s). All of you are familiar with the NACO work involved in working with these records. This brief presentation will be about the planning and thinking behind the project.
Aaron Kuperman from Library of Congress
Several annoying areas where the text of RDA (and earlier codes) conflicted with "the real world" and with what law catalogers were actually doing, and which can and should be corrected at this time.
Miloche Kottman, University of Kansas Libraries
At the University of Kansas, the pandemic provided an opportunity to update personal and corporate headings generated from importing our legacy finding aids into ArchivesSpace, a web-based, open-source archives information management system which has some authority control capabilities. We used a combination of id.loc.gov, our local catalog and RDA guidelines to update and enhance headings in our local catalog and ArchivesSpace files and in some cases created NACO records.
Victor Gorodinsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Library
Because of the pandemic, I've been working from home since mid-March, with just occasional visits to the office. Since I don't have access to books at home, I decided to catch up on database maintenance.
Among other things, I spend at least several hours per day to search for pre-RDA authority records in OCLC (using Connexion), and then I update them to the full RDA level. Because of my specialty, I concentrate on Slavic and East-European language records, especially Russian; there are thousands of NARs that need to be updated to RDA. I do that and then send weekly reports (BFMs) to Paul Frank.
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Melanie Polutta
Cataloging Policy Specialist
Library of Congress
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