A Bird’s Eye View of Authority Control in Cataloging
Workshop on Taxonomic Authority Files
Karen Calhoun, Cornell University Library
June 22, 1998
Washington DC
Introduction
I have to admit I had misgivings when Stan Blum invited me to speak about authority control in cataloging to a conference involving the taxonomic community. What in the world could I have to say that would be useful to you? I thought maybe the key to figuring that out was examining what it is about authority control that has kept me fascinated for over 15 years.
So, after reflecting on that, annoying my friends by forcing them to tell me about taxonomy (nobody knew much), reading Stan Blum’s proposal to the National Science Foundation for this workshop about six times,[i] exploring some of your Web sites,[ii] and searching BIOSIS for abstracts of some of your papers, I came to the conclusion that I really do have something to say.
Specifically, I’m going to tell you the story of the rise of cooperative authority control in cataloging, drawing parallels as I go to the problem domain of the systematics community and biological information managers. I’m going to describe what I think made community-wide authority control possible in library catalogs, and I’m going to give you a high-level view of how it works, both from a systems perspective and from the perspective of a cataloger.
Along the way I’ll share with you what I see as the limitations of the current system in libraries and where we need to go next. I’ll conclude with what I see as our communities’ shared challenges for the future.
The Rise of Community-Wide Authority Control in Cataloging
Twenty years ago, the Council on Library Resources, a very important agency in the United States library community, was taking a keen interest in establishing the pieces of a national library and information service network. Many found the Council’s position persuasive--that a critical component of an information...