BCC2004/Auth/3

Authorities Subcommittee
Submitted by Marlena Frackowski, Chair

The business meeting of the Authorities Subcommittee was held on Thursday, February 12th. Two new members appointed after the 2003 meeting in Austin, Candice Feldt and Brad Eden, were introduced; and contributions of the three retiring members, Robert Freeborn, Anita Breckbill, and Lucas Graves, were acknowledged. The agenda of the meeting included highlights from the ACIG and MRC meetings at ALA Midwinter in San Diego, as well as discussion of other current issues.

The Subcommittee has been exploring whether non-English collective titles (e.g., Schubert's Liederzyklen) might better be formulated in English. Since this is not entirely (if at all) an authority issue, the matter will be referred to the Subcommittee on Descriptive Cataloging for further consideration.

A need for author-title cross-references in authority records for works with shared responsibility has been identified. The issue was originally raised by NACO participants and discussed informally with LC, who basically rebuked the idea. Nevertheless, the Subcommittee has decided to pursue the matter by drafting a proposal to LC.

100/240 connectivity, a problem experienced by some local systems, will again be referred to the Subcommittee on MARC Formats for further consideration.

Another issue which has been floating around for the past two years is whether data may be included in public notes in name authority records in order to perform an informational function (similar to 680 explanatory notes in subject authority records). Apparently, such an inclusion is technically feasible, but discouraged by LC. A proposal will be developed which will attempt to justify such notes and provide general guidelines for their construction.

It has also been suggested that the Types of Composition document might be useful to automated authority control vendors, if they were to develop a suite of standard, automatic heading flips. Such a suite might improve the quality of automated authority services.

The Subcommittee's open meeting was held jointly with the Subcommittee on MARC Formats on Friday, February 13th. The Chair reported on her liaison activities to the ACIG and MRC meetings in San Diego. And Mickey Koth (MCB Editor) and Jim Zychowicz (A-R Editions) gave a presentation on the Music Cataloging Bulletin Online, which was launched in January.

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Last updated March 14, 2004