RE: Headings Report for Non-Unique 4xx

["Beall Jeffrey" <Jeffrey dot Beall at cudenver dot edu>]

Barbara:

In my library, we find that authority records fall in to the "Non-Unique
4xxs" file for these reasons:

1. A heading has been split into two (or more) new headings.  For
example the obsolete subject heading "Labor and laboring classes" was
split in to "Labor" and "Labor movement" and "Working class."  The three
new authority records all have a 450 with the text "Labor and laboring
classes."  I think if you replace any single one of these records, it
will generate a report in the Non-Unique 4xxs file.  But for this, no
action is needed because it's okay to have the same 450 on all three
records. 

2. If we accidentally duplicate an authority record (we do our authority
control manually), and the record has at least one 4xx field, it
generally falls into the Non-Unique 4xxs report.  It also falls into the
duplicate authority record report. In this case, we delete the older of
the two duplicate records. 

3. Because we do manual authority control, we sometimes replace or add
an authority record that has changed. Sometimes these records have 4xx
fields that match other records, and these other records generally need
to be replaced as well. This is one situation where the Non-Unique 4xx
report is helpful to us--it alerts us to an outdated record that needs
to be overlaid with a newer one. 

There may be a couple other rarer things that cause this report to be
generated but I can't remember them right now. 

Jeffrey Beall, Catalog Librarian
Auraria Library
University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center
Downtown Denver Campus
1100 Lawrence St.
Denver, Colo.   USA
<jeffrey dot beall at cudenver dot edu>
+303 556-5936