Re: Suppressed authority records

[Claudia Chester <cchester@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Sounds good to me (even though we don't currently have auto authorities).
We suppress most uniform titles because even our reference staff were
confused by what III does with them.

Have you submitted this as an actual enhancement request?

At 10:02 AM 9/5/2000 -0400, you wrote:
>Speaking of enhancement requests for authority control, here's one of
>mine that falls into the Pet Peeve category.  We use automated authority
>processing, and were unhappy to discover that the system won't update
>headings if the authority record is suppressed.
>
>We suppress authority records when we don't want them to display to
>patron, because they would all fall next to each other in the index and
>would all display uselessly when a user enters a simple lastname,
>firstname search.  For example, if we don't suppress our authority
>record for Edith Wharton, an author search on Wharton Edith brings the
>user to the following screen:
>
>Wharton, Edith -- see --Wharton Edith 1862 1937                 1
>Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937.                                      222 
>Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones -- see --Wharton Edith 1862 1937   1 
>Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones, Mrs., 1862-1937 -- see --Wharton Edith
>1862 1937                                                       1
>
>This is a useless and confusing place to leave the user, and we'd much
>rather skip this display and take them right to the display they would
>have gotten if we didn't have all of those cross references in the
>authority record, so we suppress the authority record.  We still want
>the authority record to be active, however, for the purpose of finding
>any new bib records which enter our database with the author field in
>any of the invalid forms.
>
>We have a whole set of authority records that fall into this category,
>which we deliberately enhance with additional invalid headings, and we
>update them frequently to catch database errors, especially in the brief
>records that our member libraries enter for upgrade by our centralized
>cataloging site.  Currently, we need to unsuppress them, update them,
>and then suppress them again to get the results that we want.
>
>If some libraries want to be able to make authority records inactive
>rather than merely suppressed, maybe there should be an option for this,
>or there could be two suppression codes, one which means "suppress the
>display," and one which means "suppress the display and don't use for
>updating headings."
>
>-- 
>Elizabeth Thomsen, Member Services Manager
>NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
>NOBLE Enhancement Requests: http://www.noblenet.org/enhance/
>et@xxxxxxxxxx
>--
>This message was distributed through the Innovative Users Group INNOPAC list.
>Private replies:  Elizabeth Thomsen <et@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Public replies:   INNOPAC@xxxxxxxxxx
>Archives:  http://innopacusers.org/list/archives/
>
*****************************************************************
Claudia Chester				E-mail: cchester@xxxxxxxxxx 
Technical Services Librarian		Phone:  925.258.2362
Fisher Library				FAX:    925.254.8136
John F. Kennedy University
12 Altarinda Rd.			Nothing is simple. It 
Orinda CA 94563				takes time and work.
					- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*****************************************************************

--
This message was distributed through the Innovative Users Group INNOPAC list.
Private replies:  Claudia Chester <cchester@xxxxxxxxxx>
Public replies:   INNOPAC@xxxxxxxxxx
Archives:  http://innopacusers.org/list/archives/