Have you ever gone to the library to look for a certain book or visited the UD Libraries’ website to find books and articles on a specific subject or by a particular person? If so, did you find what you were looking for? Were you presented with relevant results about the topic or author you set out to find? If so, you were likely the beneficiary of a long tradition of good authority work. Catalogers and people who create authority records have done their jobs well.
In contrast, Google will almost certainly find the same books and articles — but mixed in with millions of less authoritative, if not absolutely unrelated, results. Will you find the good links on the first page of results? Maybe.
Even as online library catalogs such as UDiscover start to look more like search engines — the kids these days! — trustworthy searches and results can be far more reliable with authority records working quietly behind the scenes. Many of the filters and facets alongside your search results draw directly from the Library of Congress subject headings and name authority files, which allow researchers to narrow down their searches.
The Card Catalog
It’s easy to take today’s access to so much information for granted. Back in the day, when we wanted to find a book at the library, we had to go to the card catalog. “What was the card catalog?” you ask. It was this …
Depending on your library, it might have consisted of a few heavy wooden cabinets of little drawers — or an entire room filled with them. Each drawer held hundreds of 3-by-5-inch cards, usually multiple cards for every book to accommodate searches by title, author(s), and subject matter. The cards could also display publisher, date, edition, page count, size and illustration information — and sometimes “See from” and “See also” cross-reference notes pointing to other cards, often in other drawers. Now we have nice little hyperlinks. Finally, most cards included the call number so that you could locate the item in your library.
Back to Those Name Authorities …
The most important reason we keep such specific name authority records (NARs) is for disambiguation. Did your professor assign a book by Mary Smith? Which Mary Smith? NARs disambiguate people with similar names by adding a fuller name, date or other distinguishing information. That way, you can tell the difference between:
- Smith, Mary, 1719-1811
- Smith, Mary, 1951-
- Smith, Mary Ann, -1891
- Smith, Mary (Congressional researcher)
- Smith, Mary E., active 1919
- Smith, Mary (Food blogger)
… and the hundreds of other Mary Smiths with authority records. When library catalogers identify which Mary Smith wrote the book in hand, they will “control” the name in the catalog record to link it to the correct authorized form. It sometimes requires substantial research to ensure accurate identification.
What if you finished reading the book It, and now you want to read everything by Stephen King? It’s not as simple as knowing that he’s a Stephen and not a Steven. There are nearly 100 Stephen Kings with NARs. The one you want is:
- King, Stephen, 1947-
But even that knowledge might not be enough. His NAR includes the fact that he has used at least two alternate identities for his writing. Don’t forget to look for books by Richard Bachman and Beryl Evans!
Is the Authority File Always Correct?
Nope. And catalogers are thankful that authority record maintenance no longer means physically correcting dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of related cards by hand, one drawer at a time. The story of life before “global updates” could fill a post of its own. Now we have a Name Authority Cooperative (NACO) program, and we all share authority records — and their updates — in one centralized file. Phew!
Modern technology has made things so much easier. For example, the Marian Library recently acquired a volume with the following information on the title page: Methode admirable pour aymer, seruir et honorer la glorieuse Vierge Marie nostre aduocate … de l’italien du R.P. Alexis de Salo, predicateur Capucin. The volume is a 1669 French translation of the original Italian version by “R.P. Alexis de Salo, predicateur Capucin,” aka “Friar Alessio,” and it was my job to catalog it (that is, to fully and properly describe it so that it can be found by anyone).
How Did It Go?
First things first: Did the Capuchin friar Alexis/Alessio already have a NAR, or did I need to create one? Yes, he already had one. The Library of Congress Authority File listed him as “Salo, Alessio de.”
OK. Makes sense, sort of. He was Italian, so “Alessio” fit better than “Alexis.” But I doubted that Salo was his last name. Just as Leonardo da Vinci’s last name is not “da Vinci” or even “Vinci,” his NAR correctly reads “Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519,” with no last name, only his birth and death dates and the place of origin to distinguish him from any prior or subsequent Leonardi from Vinci.
I didn’t particularly agree with the existing heading, but changes to an authority record shouldn’t be undertaken lightly, even in modern times. Still, I saw the name “Segala” in one of his “See from” references, and it turned out that the Marian Library already held several of his works, all cataloged under “Segala, Alessio,” but without controlled links to his NAR.
All of these books by the same author should be linked through one authoritative form of his name. But which version should be used? Just stick with “Alessio de Salo,” since it already existed? Authority rules maintain that in cases where a variety of name formats and spellings have been used for the same person, the established form should reflect the predominant usage in their works and in the form and language most used by the author themself. Let the research commence!
Setting the Record Straight
After a lot of bibliographical and biographical investigation, I found that most Italian editions called him Alessio Segala — as did the authorities of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Italy — or just Alessio — like the Capuchin Order’s records, which usually called the Cappuccini by their given names alone (Alessio, from Salò, from the noble family of Segala). Most of the works that used “Alessio/Alexis de Salo” were translations of his works into other languages. So I had my answer: I changed the NAR to “Segala, Alessio, da Salo, 1558-1628,” with new alternate name “See from” references so that most search variations would lead back to the correct record.
Now, all of the books written by or about this author can be linked through his name authority record. And, thanks to today’s modern library catalogs, other libraries with works by Alessio, when cataloged properly and using Library of Congress authorities, are automatically connected for easier searching.
That’s just one small piece of what we do to make research possible. Come test it out!
— Chris Tangeman is the University Libraries’ special collections cataloger.
Image credits
- Stephen King card generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI) based on user prompt.
- Card catalog scene generated by Google Gemini (Imagen) based on user prompt and reference photos.
- Photo of title page.
- Card image generated by ChatGPT (OpenAI) based on user prompt.