Resolving authority records deleted by the Library of Congress (LTS Procedure #174)

Scope: After processing the JSON file generated by CUL-IT into an excel spreadsheet, each item on the spreadsheet needs to be resolved. These instructions focus on deleted authority records. These authorized access points are no longer valid, and further research may need to be conducted to determine the correct new heading(s). An authority record may need to be created if there are multiple items that match a deleted heading but cannot be matched to an existing authority record. 

Contacts: Mary Campany

Unit: Metadata Design and Operations

Date last updated: June 2023

Date of next review: June 2024

1. Highlight the first two columns of the spreadsheet, “Completed” and “changeCategory”. Select the “Filter” button from the “Editing” section in the top ribbon.
   
2. Filter the “changeCategory” to show only “Delete”.
3. Click the link in the “blacklightLink” column.
4. Open the relevant new authority record in OCLC using the value in the “id” column.
5. Determine if the entity in the bibliographic records shown in Blacklight match the entity described in the authority record.
   1. When the entities do not match, further research in the name authority file and other resources will be required to determine the correct entity. Special attention should be paid to:
      1. Partial matches that do not match updated heading, but are still incorrect and need maintenance.
      2. Undifferentiated names.
      3. Partial matches of established names (e.g. “Williams, Richard” is a partial match of “Williams, Richard, $d 1780-844", but is also an established heading of its own).
      4. Matches on initials or pseudonyms that appear in updated authority records’ 4XX (reference tracings).
6. If the entity matches the one described in the authority record or the librarian has found another entity that matches the item, update the bib record accordingly.
7. If a matching entity is not found, consider creating a name authority record, especially if there are multiple bib records that were clearly created by the same entity.
8. Update the “completed” column with one of the values listed below. Explanations of values are included in parentheses.
   1. Done (All bib records associated with this row have been updated, and the Blacklight search result page will display as empty.) 
   2. Diacritic (The change could not be saved because the new heading was basically the same as the old heading except for a change in diacritic that Folio considers identical to the old one.)
   3. Vendor (The record comes from a vendor and either cannot be saved because it lacks an 008 OR is so sparse that the librarian has good reason to believe that their change will be overwritten when a new version of the record is loaded in.)
   4. Skip (An appropriate authority record was not found for all items listed in the Blacklight search results. Even if matches were found for most items, if even one remains the row should be marked as a skip)
   5. Stays (The heading has changed back to the old version of the heading, or a geographic subdivision has been falsely matched with the authorized access point. The bib records stay as they are because they are already correct.)