Authority Control in the NZ

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Recommendation

Sep 26, 2024DRAFT:

After Alma 2024 August release was made available in the Alma production environment, campuses can use Authority Control Task List in their IZ to identify access points that are associated with NZ bibliographic records with their holdings and require attention. So, there is no need to request NZ access for this task.

A potential workflow:

• Filter as much as possible from within the Authority Control Task List (i.e., limit to one field and one vocabulary; limit to only records linked to NZ; limit to one week; not suppressed from discovery).

Open

• Campus staff can either directly work on the list in Alma or use EXCEL files exported from Alma. Any changes to access points should be made in WorldCat.

• Please be aware that items on the list are current only as of the date in the “Change Date” column--the results are not dynamically updated. If a heading has been updated since the date shown, it will not disappear from the list. Additionally, the authority files in the Alma CZ don’t always update as quickly as the files available through WorldCat, so there may be a delay between changes made in, e.g., the LCNAF, and the copy of the LCNAF in Alma.

Impact

Reasoning

Background

Relevant Ex Libris documentation:

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Materials/050Alma_FAQs/Metadata_Management/Authority_Control

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/Metadata_Management/060Working_with_Authority_Records

• https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Product_Documentation/010Alma_Online_Help_(English)/Metadata_Management/060Working_with_Authority_Records/010Using_the_Authority_Control_Task_List

Current relevant NZ configurations:

• The “Authorities - Handle Local Authority Record Updates” and “Authorities - Link BIB Headings” jobs are both enabled and run daily.

• However, the “Authorities - Preferred Term Correction” job is disabled, since it was determined to introduce too many errors. (See Harvard’s documentation for a list of issues).

The SILS Landscape

The implementation decision (RMFG (Go-live and beyond) Working with the NZ authority control tasklist ) had an ambitious plan to generate monthly spreadsheets based on the NZ Authority Control Task List. However, since the implementation of WorldCat Daily Updates, the scope of the Authority Control Task List (ACTL) has become too massive to even consider exporting them.

Example:

For a single week (10/09/2003-10/16/2023), there are 344,914 items in the ACTL.

Attempting to narrow the results down through the available filters can help, but the number of items is still overwhelming.

• Suppressed from Discovery - No

• Linked to Community Zone - No

The ACTL does not show any information about which campuses have holdings on a particular record--you must search for the MMS ID to see holdings.

The NZ ACTL can only be accessed through the NZ instance of Alma--individual campus IZs can only see a version of the ACTL for their records that are not linked to the NZ.

Analytics does not provide any of the information available in the ACTL.

Many campuses regularly perform authority work at the time of cataloging (e.g., creating an authority record for a name come across in daily work).

But the bulk of the database maintenance work (i.e., ensuring that legacy records continue to be updated with current forms of headings) has now mostly been abandoned, with the hope that our WorldCat Daily Updates will take care of it.

What is still desired?

• (UCLA): Since many of our records come in through vendor loads or are processed by student workers, we would like to be able to review headings for records recently cataloged in our collection that may have issues so we can address them. This was possible in our last system (Voyager) with the help of our authority vendor (Backstage Library Works). It does not appear to be possible in our current implementation of Alma.

Options Considered [remove if not needed]

Dependencies

Questions to consider

Action Log