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This is most commonly applied to authorship details - hence the name - but the term has been broadened to cover anything where a single concept may be entered in multiple different ways. It is thus an example of a Controlled Vocabulary . It also serves to ensure that people with the same name can be distinguished. EXAMPLES For example, Winston Churchill was a famous British Politician . The Library Of Congress lists three different forms of his name:
All of these will be attached to Bibliographic records - however, all of them are the same person. The solution is to consult an ''authority file'' when the books are Catalogued ; it will note that "Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill" is the same person as "Winston Churchill", and so the preferred name will also be entered into the catalogue record. Then, when a person comes to search for "Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill", they will also be directed towards records catalogued under "Winston Churchill". The preferred name is termed an "authority heading", and the others are merely listed as "references". The goal of a well-organised catalogue is to have all entries under the authority heading, and the references merely to serve to "catch" people searching for them. The reason for the dates being added to the record is to allow for the person to be separated from others of the same name - there is currently a Winston Churchill who is active in British politics, and Winston Churchill was a well-known American Novelist . To further confuse matters, another Sir Winston Churchill wrote a book in 1675, and thus needs to be listed. As such, the authority file has authority headings for:
The dates allow the cataloguer - or the searcher - to distinguish between the individuals; it is usually not difficult to work out from context (or from a quick search) which one is involved. (Where there are a ''lot'' of people with the same name - say, John Smith - it may be necessary to add a note of their nationality, or to give the month of birth, but usually a simple note of years suffice.) Authority headings can cover personal authors, names of organisations or groups, names of countries or other jurisdictions, and meetings such as conferences, seminars and congresses. Using authority headings in a catalogue record ensures that all items written by a person, group, jurisdiction or meeting can be found with the one search no matter how many variations of the name appears on different publications or are known to individual people. Another type of authority heading that can be useful is a series title heading that can help find everything published in a series. As it can be difficult guessing the authorised term it is most useful to search by keywords first and when one relevant record has been located finding the authorised term as used on that record and repeating the search using that term. On more advanced system the authority heading will be a hyperlink, able to be clicked on and so making the extra search unnecessary. EXTERNAL LINKS |
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