Authorities in Voyager

[  Introduction  |   Source Records  |    Adding Local Information to Source Records  |    Local Authorities  |   Table of Contents (Voyager System)  |   Table of Contents (Top)]

Introduction

Authority records in Voyager are standard MARC records. They are very similar in appearance to bibliographic records. The fixed fields appear in the MARC tab, with the variable fields appearing below.

As with the bibliographic records, authority records also have a System and History tab at the top of the record.

Whereas bibliographic records will usually have attached holdings and item records, authority records are not directly linked to any of the other types of records.

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Source Records

At the time of Queen's data conversion from NOTIS to Voyager, all of our source authority records were loaded into the main Queen's database, together with whatever local authority records we could identify as having extra local information added. As a result, some headings have duplicate authorities; as time allows, these conflicts will be resolved. The intent is to have a single authority record per heading.

Unlike with NOTIS, it is no longer necessary to set an authority record so that the applicable information appears in the OPAC. In Voyager, as soon as there is a bibliographic record containing a heading which matches the heading in an authority record, the relevant information appears in the OPAC to the patron. As a result, many headings which we had not yet validated, will automatically have been matched against source records.

Please note, however, that the authority record will not appear in the OPAC unless there is an exact match for the heading; as a result, authority records do not appear to the public if the heading has been used only with a sub body or subdivision, and not on its own. This is a recognized problem.

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Adding Local Information to Source Records

Since our intention is to retain only a single authority record per heading in our database, that authority record will normally be the source record. In this manner, we can run the updates to the authorities and have the records updated automatically, with limited manual intervention. However, we will wish to add local information to these source records in some instances. In order not to loose the local information if a source record is updated, the tags containing that information need to be "flagged". Any tag containing such local information should have a |5 CaOKQ subfield added. The import process can be tailored to retain any such tags.

Editing authority records can be done using the same methods described in Bibliographic Records

We will also add a |d CaOKQ subfield to the 040 tag; however, this information is no longer crucial to the update procedure, and may in fact be lost if the source record is updated.

LC does not use either the 014 or the 690 field. Our import profile will be set to keep both of these tags without needing to flag these tags with the |5 CaOKQ.

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Local Authorities

New local authority records will only be added for headings which do not have a source record, and which require cross-references and/or local information such as literary call numbers.

Similarly, existing local authorities which duplicate source records will be deleted from the database. First, however, any local information we wish to retain should be transferred to the source record, and the appropriate tags flagged with the |5 CaOKQ subfield.

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