Speaker: Jamie Carlstone This presentation is on how to regain authority control in a large research library catalog: first, dealing with a backlog of problems from years without authority control and second, creating a process for ongoing workflows to realistically maintain authority control when new records are added to the collection.

1. Ctrl + Alt + Repeat: Strategies for
Regaining Authority Control after a
Migration
Jamie Carlstone
Authority Metadata Librarian

2. https://www.northwestern.edu/native-
american-and-indigenous-
peoples/about/Land Acknowledgement.html
1
Northwestern is a community of learners situated within a network of historical and
contemporary relationships with Native American tribes, communities, parents,
students, and alumni. It is also in close proximity to an urban Native American
community in Chicago and near several tribes in the Midwest. The Northwestern
campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires,
the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk
nations. It was also a site of trade, travel, gathering and healing for more than a dozen
other Native tribes and is still home to over 100,000 tribal members in the state of
Illinois.

3. Authority Control at NUL
• Voyager to Alma migration in 2015
• Hired in October 2019 as Authority
Metadata Librarian
• Priority: create workflows for ongoing
authority control and retroactive authority
control
2

4. Outline
• Doing ongoing authority control
• Retroactive authority control
• Recent Covid-19/work from home projects
for authority control
3

5. ONGOING AUTHORITY WORK
4

6. Authority Control in Alma
5
Linked to LCSH!
Not linked

7. Tracking Authority Control
6

8. 7

9. Using Publishing Profile for LD
=700 1$aHill, John B.
=700 1$aAmrine, Neil J.$0(uri) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2020064187$0(uri)
http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC|no2020064187
=700 1$aRogers, John F. W.,$d1956-$0(uri) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2008022478$0(uri)
http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC|no2008022478

10. 9

11. Preferred Term Correction (PTC)
10

12. Type of change Accuracy of change
11
Change Count
added diacritic 1
change ISBD punctuation 50
match on 400 6
remove ISBD punctuation 209
Reversed order of names 1
unclear 1
FAST
Correct 3
LCNAMES
Correct 221
Incorrect 40
Unsure 10
LCSH
Correct 175
MESH
Correct 6

13. Lessons From Testing PTC
• Incorrect heading
patterns:
– Records were not
PCC
– Headings only had
subfield a ($a)
– Names were just last
name, first name
12
Field IsHeadingcorrect Change BIB Heading Before
100 Unsure remove ISBD punctuation Hartmann, Dirk, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Hudson, Bradford T., author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Soltes, Fiona, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Curtis, Sean, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Seitz, Michael, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Martínez, Ignacio, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Hughes, Simon, author.
100 Unsure Reversed order of names Hao, Qian. author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/rela
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Foster, Will, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Schultz, Michael, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Gupta, Sunil, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Weber, Daniel, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Bauer, D., author.
100 Unsure remove ISBD punctuation Lin, Xiaodong. author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Robinson, Ed, author.
100 Unsure remove ISBD punctuation Cannon, Jason, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Traub, Eric, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Thioulouse, Jean. author. aut http://id.loc.gov/vocabul
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Mayer, Hermann, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Kabacoff, Robert, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Vasilev, Ivan, author.
100 Incorrect remove ISBD punctuation Maas, Gerard, author.

14. 13
mmsid Network Number Heading MARC heading LOC URI VIAF URI
9980886667002441
(OCoLC)1125101515z(OCoLC)1135590039$0(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1125101515$0(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1135590039 Sargent, Matthew,
http://www.viaf.org/viaf/lccn/no20
07035134
=100 1$aSargent,
Matthew,$ecomposer,$eproducer.$0(uri)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2007035134$0
(uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC
no200703
5134
9980886666902441
(OCoLC)11214788740(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1121478874 Bjorkedal, Alison,
http://www.viaf.org/viaf/lccn/no20
14053682
=700 1$aBjorkedal, Alison,$einstrumentalist.$0(uri)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2014053682$0
(uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC
no201405
3682
9980886666902441
(OCoLC)11214788740(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1121478874 Sargent, Matthew,
http://www.viaf.org/viaf/lccn/no20
07035134
=700 1$aSargent, Matthew,$eperfomer,$eaudio
producer.$0(uri)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2007035134$0
(uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC
no200703
5134
9980886366902441
(OCoLC)11354630900(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1135463090 Ronan, Dan,
http://www.viaf.org/viaf/lccn/no20
18053592
=100 1$aRonan, Dan,$eauthor.$0(uri)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2018053592$0
(uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC
no201805
3592
9980886366702441
(OCoLC)11354630720(uri)
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1135463072 Lamb, Eleanor,
http://www.viaf.org/viaf/lccn/no20
17114115
=100 1$aLamb, Eleanor,$eauthor.$0(uri)
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/no2017114115$0
(uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC
no201711
4115

15. Authority Control Review Program
• Displays bib and
authority record side
by side
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16. Using the Program
1. Selecting records
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17. 16

18. 17

19. 2. Export the records with the Publishing
Profile
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20. 19

21. 20

22. 21
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23. 3. Run it!
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24. 23

25. 24

26. 25

27. 26

28. 27

29. 4. Edit the incorrect headings in Alma
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30. Ongoing Authority Control
• Review what the authority control built in
tools do
• Let the system automate where it is
successful
• Review only what needs it (and get
creative)
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31. RETROACTIVE WORK
Some tricks for doing retroactive authority control
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32. • For this presentation defined as: working on
records that were added/edited prior to the
last few months
• Premise: I have a set of records and I want to
use Preferred Term Correction on that set
only
31
Step 1: Create the set
you want to work with

33. The Normalization Rule Way
1. Create a
normalization rule that
does something (like
add a field to the
heading)
2. Create a
normalization rule that
reverses that job
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34. • Now there are two jobs: 1 that adds a
subfield, one that deletes the subfield.
33

35. • Each record in
the set is now
newly modified
and will be
processed by
Preferred Term
Correction
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36. The Sandbox Way
• Export the records
from your Alma
production and open
in MarcEdit
• Save the MMSID in
the 002 tag, then
import into the
Sandbox
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37. • Unlike in Production, Linking headings and
Preferred Term Correction can be run
anytime
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38. More on Editing Outside Alma
• Useful when you know the heading/s you
want to change
– i.e.
• Problematic terms
• Odd characters/spaces/etc.
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39. Searching/Correcting “Bad”
Characters
• Consecutive spaces
• The OCLC
delimiter: ǂ
• The MARCedit
delimiter: $
38

40. Replacing Updated Headings
• Swaziland  Eswatini
• Transvestite  Cross dresser
• Mental retardation  Intellectual Disability
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41. WORK FROM HOME & AUTHORITY
CONTROL
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42. The “Voyager Headings”
• Local authority
headings from
Voyager (-2015) not
migrated into Alma
• 46,776 Personal
Names
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43. Voyager Headings
Personal name example
42
=LDR 00359cz a2200121r 4500
=001 151466
=002 $a
=005 20130310181441.0
=008
800702n|a||||a|||a||c||||d
=035 $aCAA8298NU
=046 $f1887
=100 1$aMierowsky, David,$d1887-
=400 1$aEliezer, Ben,$d1887-
=667 $aTHIS 1XX FIELD CANNOT BE USED
UNDER RDA UNTIL THIS RECORD HAS BEEN
REVIEWED AND/OR UPDATED

44. Voyager Headings
Corporate body example 1
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=LDR 00465cz a2200169r 4500
=001 147484
=005 20150106095159.0
=008
790830n|a||||a|||aanaengd
=035 $aCAA2609NU
=040 $aIEN
=110 2$aChicago Peace Action Coalition.
=410 2$aC.P.A.C.
=410 2$aCPAC
=667 $aTHIS 1XX FIELD CANNOT BE USED
UNDER RDA UNTIL THIS RECORD HAS BEEN
REVIEWED AND/OR UPDATED
=667 $aRB:2/2/76
=670 $a#AAN7951
=675 $aLC in NUC thru Aug. 75.

45. Voyager Headings
Corporate body example 2
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=LDR 00354cz a2200121r 4500
=001 163429
=005 20150106095218.0
=008
801126n|a||nna|||a|nc||||d
=035 $aCAC4517NU
=110 2$aChicago Abused Women Coalition.
=410 2$aC.A.W.C.
=410 2$aCAWC
=667 $aTHIS 1XX FIELD CANNOT BE USED
UNDER RDA UNTIL THIS RECORD HAS BEEN
REVIEWED AND/OR UPDATED

46. Project Setup
• Gary finds the file, converts to .mrc for me
(thanks Gary)
• Export into tab delimited file using the
MarcEdit tool
• Add my own columns for tracking
• Use OpenRefine to reconcile headings before
sharing
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47. Shared Voyager Names File
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48. Outcomes So Far
• As of May 28:
– 339 personal name NACO headings created
– 942 personal name headings researched
– 121 corporate body NACO headings created
– 218 corporate body headings researched
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49. Authority Work with Intention
• Finding ways to improve authority control
for our universities/communities
• Making use of university resources already
available
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50. Hidden No More
• Create/improve NACO for Northwestern
women faculty from HNM website
• Create/improve Wikidata records
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51. 50

52. Wikidata
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53. Questions?
• Github:
https://github.com/jdcar/authoritycontrol
• Email: jamie.carlstone@northwestern.edu
52