Independent Study, 10/28/09

Today is the last day of interviews on authority control with the cataloging staff at Jackson Library.

Cindy Zaruba

Cindy Zaruba is the Multiformats Cataloging Assistant for Jackson Library. She has also recently taken on some of the music cataloging as well. Cindy had some very interesting authority control stories. The first on she told me involved a UNCG faculty member. This faculty member had previously been married and since divorced. He and his wife had both hyphenated their names after that marriage. He had been published under that hyphenated name. The other day he contacted a reference librarian about the situation. I guess he had been searching the catalog and realized that his hyphenated name was still being used as the “official” form of his name. The reference librarian brought the situation to Cindy’s attention. She went to his authority record, and put the correct form in the 100 field and then moved the hyphenated form to the 400 field. She was able to change it in the UNCG catalog, however other libraries that have his books will have records that still use the hyphenated form of his name. It will have to be changed in OCLC. Paul Hessling will need to change it in OCLC.

In name authority records the 1XX fields contain the official form of the name, the 4XX fields contain the old form which is no longer authorized and the 5XX fields contain an older form of the name that is still a legitimate form for use. The best example of that is the UNCG authority file that was created by Paul Hessling.

Paul Hessling

Paul Hessling is the Special Collections/Chief Monographic Cataloger for Jackson Library. Paul repairs the authority records that already exist in UNCG’s catalog. He is also responsible for changing the authority records in OCLC. After changing the records in OCLC he then must wait for them to update the records. However, this whole process usually takes quite a while so Paul usually just changes the records in the catalog himself. His goal is to try to get the necessary authority records in at the same time as the items are cataloged, but that is not always a reality. In order to make a change in OCLC, it first must be reported to the Library of Congress with the proper documentation. If a library is a member of or takes part in a cooperative program such as NACO or BIBCO, then they are able to put records in or change records in OCLC.

Paul is also in charge of creating the library’s local authority records and the series authority records that UNCG uses, such as the Girls’ in Books Series authority records or the Women’s Detective Fiction Series. Many of the Women’s Detective Fiction Series was written by author’s who were writing under various pseudonyms. According to Paul, the Library of Congress is slow to realize that a pseudonym is a valid entry point. Therefore, he has created records for those pseudonyms himself.

Carolyn Bowen

Carolyn Bowen is the Multiformats Cataloger at Jackson Library. She is in charge of cataloging the library’s map collection. Maps offer an interesting authority problem. Geographic headings are either juristic or non-juristic. Juristic geographic headings are political, usually appear in the 1XX, 6XX or 7XX fields and a capable of authorship. Non-juristic geographic headings are used for geographic features such as mountain ranges or rivers, and are used in the 6XX field. Juristic headings can be difficult to pin down. For example, borders can change over time due to conquests, war, etc. Carolyn said Russia is a good example of this. Due to this problem, it can be challenging to figure out which geographic heading should be used. It is often a judgment call. Carolyn looks at similar records and consults the Subject Heading Manual and the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations to help her decide which headings are appropriate.