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GROUP: Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group CHAIR: Linda Ballinger REPORTER: Anaclare Evans EMAIL: aa4424@wayne.edu CONFERENCE: midwinter MEETING> Interest Group business meeting ATTENDEES: 126 CURRENT ACTIVITIES: Five speakers presented updates on major activities relating to authority control issues. Taylor Surface reported on his research at OCLC to provide access to multiple thesauri thru a single search. Ann Della Porta delivered an update on LC activities as related to authority control. Highlights included increasing the number of simultaneous users and increasing the amount of time of inactivity for users of the authority file and catalogs from outside of the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress catalogs have been converted from MARC8 to Unicode UTF-8. Libraries should consider converting their own data since LC won't be able to support dual systems indefinitely. LC recently approved the addition of death dates to authority records whose headings already contained birth dates. NACO libraries will be notified when it is permissible to update such records. Names without dates should not have dates added. LC is working with the bibliographic u tilities on the handling of non-Roman alphabet materials in scripts other than JACKPHY. There are many questions. LCRI 1.0G1 has been cancelled. A draft LCRI 25.13 relating to manuscripts is out for comment. Glenn Patton reported on some OCLC activities. There will be some upcoming MARC changes to implement some values that were not implemented due to OCLC's system upgrade. A number of projects were completed to clean up the OCLC database including the replacement of 12.7 million bibliographic records and the merger of 290,000 bibliographic records. OCLC is working with LC to help identify those headings that can be updated by adding a death date. Jennifer Bowen commented briefly on the development of _Resource Description and Access_ parts II and III dealing with choice and form of headings as they relate to authority control. There may be some terminology changes but it does not look as if there will be a significant number of headings to be changed. Sections II and III will be out for constituency review later this year. Ms Bowen also provided those present with the URL for an informal discussion list relating to RDA. Ed Glazier provided the RLG update on authorities in RLIN21. As part of a major system upgrade, RLG also upgraded their authority file. One enhancement was the retention of deleted and superseded versions of authority records for both names and subjects. The authority files can now be searched in several new ways. It is also possible to generate a skeletal authority record from a MARC bibliographic record. The record will still possibly need some work to be a complete record. Under development is the ability for the RLIN21 software to generate selected conflicts in the authorities database. The presentations were followed by questions and answer sessions. The room assigned did not contain a sufficient number of chairs. Also the requested microphones were not delivered. It is important in a large discussion to have microphones for the audience questions. FUTURE ACTIVITIES: During the business portion of the meeting, plans for the annual conference program meeting were reviewed and finalized. The program for summer includes several speakers on less traditional approaches to organizing information which can enhance authority control. Although five speakers have been identified, at least one more speaker might help round out the program. Several ideas were suggested including Innovative Interface's keyword on authorities headings. Can this be expanded beyond the one vendor? Another suggestion was someone from North Carolina State University speaking about Endecka on Sirsi. Marcia Bates and her work on clustered authorities was another suggestion. By then Lois Chan and Ed O'Neill might have something to present about FASAR. We began thinking about the Midwinter discussion for 2007. The idea of vendor updates relating to international activities related to authorities seemed to develop. We would ask all vendors of authority control services to give an update. The discussion group leaders would provide a short list of questions to start the discussion. John Reese will provide the group with some FAQs. Discussion also considered the 2007 annual conference program. One suggestion was faceted browsing. It was suggested that one speaker set the stage and then someone from a library that has implemented such a tool could speak and address questions such as what was gained versus what was lost. The panel could be rounded out with a public services librarian addressing the impact upon the users. Someone suggested principles of faceting as a possible preconference. It was suggested that the IMF experiment and implementation at the World Bank could be an interesting presentation. Anaclare Evans reported that the bibliography is coming along and she hopes it will be ready by annual conference. She is now copying and pasteing abstracts into the bibliography. By annual we will have something to show various publication committees. At the annual conference we will need to elect a new Vice-Chair/Chair-elect and representatives for uniform titles and local systems. We will need to renew our LITA IG status. We will need to do a form and attach the last three meeting reports. This is due 6/6/06. LITA asked us to have a representative to the LITA blog. We aren't sure what this liaison is responsibile for. Did someone blog the meeting and is there a need for follow up? Since this is a joint group with ALCTS we discussed the ALCTS Strategic Plan. Copies were distributed for comment. We noted that there were some areas that required editing for clarity, others that could be combined, and still others that should be divided into standards and best practices. Mary Charles Lasater will take these suggestions back to ALCTS as she is our liaison to ALCTS. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: We need to be certain that we have a sufficient number of chairs for attendees. We also need to have microphones in the audience and at the head table for the presentations and the question and answer sessions. |
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