The State of Cooperative Authority Work in the Library Community

John J. Riemer

Assistant Head, Cataloging Department, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia.

Rationale and History

Cooperative authority work is the oldest component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). That it is represents both something fortunate and a logical first move for a cooperative cataloging project:

• Authority records are relatively brief (compared to the length of an average bibliographic record),
• They are widely-used building blocks in bibliographic records,
• Their legitimacy has often been begrudged by cost-cutters who see the essence of cataloging activity as generating a bibliographic record and a spine label. In that context, authority records appear to play only an indirect role by contributing from behind the scenes consistency in bibliographic record access points, and thus don't seem quite as indispensable.

Moreover, authority control—as the process of selecting, establishing, and maintaining unique, standardized headings to be used as access points in the catalog, as well as relating variations and other headings to them—is expensive.

Collaborative establishment of personal author, corporate body, and conference headings began in 1977, just one year after a communications format for authority data had been adopted. Headings for series followed, in 1983. "NACO" refers to the Name Authority Co-Operative. Collaborative authoritative work on subject headings (referred to as "SACO") can be traced as far back as 1982. Though no formal training program has ever been launched for new classification numbers, it is possible for cataloging institutions to follow published procedures written for Library of Congress catalogers in order to propose additions and changes to the classification schedules; a number of institutions have done this.

NACO and SACO now have over 250 members; past and present participants have represented at least 42 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. The original momentum and rationale for this cooperative authority work might be ascribed to a longstanding library practice with bibliographic records. In the name of not reinventing the wheel, libraries, when faced with cataloging a book that other libraries, especially the Library of Congress, have already successfully dealt with, have "copy cataloged" from the existing record. This behavior implies acceptance of the authority records that the bibliographic record is based on. If the efficiency of copy cataloging is a good idea, why not return the favor and further the cost savings—by contributing nationally those headings the Library of Congress hasn't provided, especially if the intellectual work is going to be done locally anyway? (Besides, today's Library of Congress is simply not as budgetarily equipped to generate as much original cataloging output as in the past.) Every original cataloging effort anywhere ought to be shared nationally, and beyond. Historically, libraries have operated on the cataloging principle, "How would I catalog this book, or formulate this heading, if I were working at LC?" There are a lot of de facto LC-standard records out there; with training, there could be even more.

Lessons Learned

The growth of cooperative authority work has been incremental and heuristic (meaning that adjustments have been made along the way). Some examples of this:

1. The first subject project was set up to field suggestions for synonyms to existing subject terms. A lot of what was received was optimally considered for establishment as new terms. So, the program was changed to soliciting new subject heading proposals.
2. LC's selecting institutions it thought would make good members gave way to a new arrangement whereby volunteers, of the self-selected variety, would come forward.
3. Initial members were selected with an eye to how their authority work contributions would complement LC's output. The more wide-open approach of the present day is to welcome all those institutions willing to do whatever needs doing.
4. At first new headings involved in cataloging newly published materials were at a premium; later on, older materials were welcomed.
5. For the first five years that series were contributed, only those series for which LC owned a volume were admissible to the national file; now all series are welcome.
6. For the first seven years, only new authority records were accepted, and it required a written request to get an existing heading changed.

LC does not have to do all the training. In what are called "funnel" projects, groups of libraries working with a special subject matter or material format, or those collaborating in a given geographic area can submit records under the leadership of one of its members. The whole group can be treated administratively as a single member by LC. Thus, small and specialized libraries who are unable to contribute the minimum 400 names a year needed to warrant the investment of LC training time can still contribute their expertise to the program.

The year 1996 was the first in which the combined total of all NACO member contributions exceeded that of the Library of Congress; each was responsible for over a hundred thousand. In the past two decades, participants have contributed over one million of the four million records in the file.

Quality Control

After initial training and a review period, members achieve independent status and become responsible for reviewing the accuracy of their own work. Errors encountered by another member are simply corrected or are reported to LC, depending on their nature. The parts of the authority record affecting catalog access points or substantiating the formulation of the heading are considered more crucial than other portions of the record. Changes made to an authority-record heading after it has originally been established, are typically replicated on all related bibliographic records to which the heading applies. It is not enough merely to apply the heading prospectively and to grandfather in all previous records; hence, our practice of "bibliographic file maintenance." Headings affecting the work of national libraries other than LC are cleared with those institutions.

Coordination & Oversight

A cooperative endeavor as big as NACO and SACO needs some measure of central coordination and continuity. Aside from the administrative functions it fills as PCC Secretariat, Library of Congress plays other day-to-day functions that are vital to cooperative authority work. LC develops and maintains standards for authority work, affecting both the format and the content of the records. For a long time to come, the majority of the records in the authority files will be from LC, serving as an unofficial model. The Library distributes copies of the records. With its considerable experience and subject expertise, LC often serves as a last resort for questions and problems that arise.

Name authority records are fairly "atomistic," in that they can be independently contributed and what relationships they have to other names are fairly straightforward. Subject authorities need some degree of oversight—a review of the potential new heading's relationship to the overall vocabulary, beyond duplicates and conflicts. Examples from past proposals I have submitted are:

1. In changing "Catalog maintenance" to "Catalog management," I needed a reminder of the all-human-knowledge context of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Given potential confusion with department-store merchandise catalogs, I needed to add the qualifier "(Libraries)" to make that presumed context explicit.
2. The idea of proposing two new subsets of Veterinary medicine, inspired by the titles of two serial publications "Large Animal Practice" and "Small Animal Practice" suffered on several fronts: Prior to the 1960s, when dogs and cats came to receive veterinary attention, "large animal practice" amounted to a synonym for Veterinary medicine; "practice" in LCSH consistently refers to how to set up and run an office; and "small animals" in other parts of the vocabulary signifies a size much below the canine/feline level! Pet medicine was ultimately agreed on as the new term.

Future Prospects

1. The cooperative building of authority files will become more of an international effort—the players involved, the harmonization of various communication formats used, the gathering and recording of equivalents from more languages, and possibly the ability to vary the heading displayed in a given online catalog based its location.
2. The differences between name and subject authority procedures will diminish—integration of all the records into a single file, the ability of participants to input draft new and revised subject headings directly to the file (as is done with names) instead of relying on fax or email.
3. Greater interest in "mappings" may emerge—among various vocabularies in common use, between authority records and various classification schemes, links from authority records and corresponding sites on the Internet.

Now in the final stages of the USMARC format development process is a proposal to extend standard usage of URLs in bibliographic records to name and subject authority records, whenever there is a meaningful correlation between the entity represented in the authority record and a web site. Many organizations' web sites are designed to represent the body as a whole, as opposed to just another work by (and about) the author. The more time-consuming-to-create bibliographic record for the Internet resource may have a title no more meaningful than "Welcome to the [name of organization]" or no title at all. Conferences, such as this workshop, can have web sites. The authority record for a scientist could include an 856 field pointing to a personal web page, curriculum vita, or photograph. A useful map of a place can be cited in the geographic name authority record.

If definitive images of taxonomic objects are available on the Internet, perhaps our subject authority records could be augmented with URLs pointing to them. This could be complemented by or in lieu of individual specimens' receiving the equivalent of bibliographic records. The former could be done rather expeditiously. It might turn authority records into pseudo-bibliographic records, in the sense that they would be used to provide direct access to information objects. This "value added" can make authority records seem more essential in the organization of information, and it could open up a whole new avenue for cooperative cataloging activity!

Additional Information on Cooperative Authority Work in the Library Community

A more detailed account of the history of library collaboration in authority work:

1. Riemer, John J. and Karen Morgenroth (1993) "Hang Together or Hang Separately: The Cooperative Authority Work Component of NACO" Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 17(3/4): 127-61.

Organization and structure of the largest cooperative bibliographic control program in library history:

2. Program for Cooperative Cataloging (1996) "Program for Cooperative Cataloging Brochure, WWW Version." http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/brochure.html
3. Program for Cooperative Cataloging (1996) "Program for Cooperative Cataloging: Governance." gopher://marvel.loc.gov:70/00/services/cataloging/coop/coop_cncl/gov96.oct

How authority records can be used (directly) to organize information objects on the web:

4. University of Georgia Libraries (1997) "Defining Field 856 in the USMARC Authorities Format" MARBI Discussion Paper 107. gopher://marvel.loc.gov:70/00/.listarch/usmarc/dp107.doc
5. University of Georgia Libraries (1998) "Defining Field 856 in the USMARC Authorities Format" MARBI Proposal 98-13. http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/marbi/1998/98-13.html
6. Riemer, John J. (1998) "Adding 856 Fields to Authority Records: Rationale and Implications" Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 26(2): 5-9. http://www.haworthpressinc.com/ccq/ccq26nr2intro.html