Authority Control in the 21st Century: An Invitational Conference
Authority Control for the 21st Century: Towards a New Paradigm
Abraham J. Yu
University of California, Irvine
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
Authority Control:
- Accessibility
- Uniformity
- Quality
- Comprehensibility
II. Overview of the Authority Control in the 20th Century: CJK Personal Name Headings
CJK personal name headings are established in Roman form
CJK Personal Names:
- In Standard Romanization
- In Non-Standard Romanization
- In Mixed Form
- In English
The established Roman form does not always reflect the names used in publications and/or by the author
- Impact of CJK personal name headings established in Roman form
- Accessibility - not always successful, because:
- Many CJK personal names share the same romanization.
- No provision for the vernacular search key.
- One author has variant forms of headings used in publications.
- Users are not familiar with all names used by the same author.
- Users are not familiar with the romanization system.
- Users are not familiar with the established headings.
- Uniformity
- CJK personal names are established in various Roman forms.
- The Roman form does not always conform with the names used in publications or known by the community.
- The standard romanization sometimes becomes a cross-reference to the nonstandard, mixed, and English form. As a result, the standard form cannot be included in the bibliographic database as an access point.
- Quality
- Duplicate authority records for some personal names and corporate bodies.
- No vernacular script is provided in records for easy identification.
- Some headings in the bibliographic database do not match headings established in the name authority file.
- Comprehensibility
- The name authority file is incomplete.
- Many CJK personal name headings in the bibliographic database do not have corresponding LC name authority records.
- The important and useful cross-reference is not provided in some records.
III. Towards a New Paradigm: Authority Control for the 21st Century
- Multilingual Online Name Authority File
- Provide necessary cross-reference in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean for CJK personal and appropriate corporate names established in English.
- Multiscript Online Name Authority File
- Provide vernacular scripts to CJK name authority records and to appropriate corporate names
established in English with CJK cross references in romanized form.
- Multifunction Online Name Authority File
- Provide LC classification numbers to appropriate name authority records to serve as an index to the literary authors and to authors in other applicable subject areas.
- Provide LC subject headings to appropriate name authority records.
- Provide brief biographical data to appropriate personal name authority records for easy identification of different persons with the same name.
- Complete, Unique, and Timely Online Name Authority File
- Provide name authority records for every personal and corporate name in the the bibliographic database.
- Update bibliographic records when authority records
are changed, corrected, and updated.
- World Wide Web-based Online Name Authority File
- Link the Online Name Authority File, the Online Union Catalog, and the Online Subject Headings.
- Provide World Wide Web-based interface for the efficiency of accessing and verifying the authority records. The linkage would make it possible for users to perform an author search using either the established headings or the cross-reference headings in Roman or vernacular form.
IV. Conclusion
- Implement 21st Century Authority Control
- Easy to Identify the Name Authority Records
- Easy Access to Quality Bibliographic Database
- Efficient Cooperative Cataloging and Resource Sharing
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