Page 16 - DLIS104_MANAGEMENT OF LIBRARIES AND INFORMATION CENTRES

Unit 2: Library Organization

Notes

Notes The LPM could clearly be helpful in assessing some “what-if” situations in academic
libraries and applying standard library workload factors to estimating staffing
requirements. It is unclear, however, whether the model and spreadsheet will be
helpful in grappling with the increasingly complex decisions driven by digital
collections and electronic publishing.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. A library is a collection of sources, resources and .................... .
2. Models for Library Management, Decision-making and planning are authored by .................... .
3. LPM stands for .................... .
4. ARL stands for .................... .

2.2 Library Authority
Authority control is the practice of creating and maintaining index terms for bibliographic material
in a catalog in library and information science. Authority control fulfills two important functions.
First, it enables catalogers to disambiguate items with similar or identical headings. For example,
two authors who happen to have published under the same name can be distinguished from each
other by adding middle initials, birth and/or death dates, or a descriptive epithet to the heading
of one author. Second, authority control is used by catalogers to collocate materials that logically
belong together, although they present themselves differently. For example, authority records are
used to establish uniform titles, which can collocate all versions of a given work together even
when they are issued under different titles. Although theoretically, any piece of information on a
given book is amenable to authority control, catalogers typically focus on authors and titles.
Subject headings fulfill a function similar to authority records, although they are usually considered
separately.

Authority Records

The most common way of enforcing authority control in a bibliographic catalouge is to set up a
separate index of authority records, which relates to and governs the headings used in the main
catalog. This separate index is often referred to as an “authority file.” It contains an index able
record of all decisions made by catalogers in a given library, which catalogers consult when
making, or revising, decisions about headings. It is to be remembered that the function of authority
files is essentially organizational, rather than informational. That is to say, they contain a sufficient
amount of information to establish a given author or title as unique, while excluding information
that, while perhaps interesting to a reader, does not contribute to this goal.
Although practices certainly vary internationally, in the English-speaking world, it is generally
the case that a valid authority record must contain:
A heading
Any cross references
Statement of justification.
Heading refers to the form of name that the cataloguer has chosen as the authorized form.
Cross references are other forms of the name that might appear in the catalog. There are two types
of cross-references: which reference forms of the name that have been deprecated in favor of the
authorized form; which points to other forms of the name that are authorized.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 11