Authority Control

No one used to think of it as the 'ever-changing world' of cataloging. With the explosion of new technologies to be cataloged, ongoing plans for changing cataloging rules, and shrinking budgets, that’s no longer the case. More than ever, libraries need help keeping up. That’s where we come in.

LTI stays on top of changes in Library of Congress' 8 million name and 400,000 subject headings, MARC coding, and cataloging rules that affect access points and passes them along to you. We also provide authority control for NLM MeSH, LC Children's and genre headings.

But many local systems vendors have an 'authority control' module. What makes LTI's authority control different?

Each step in LTI's authority control process is designed to maximize authority record links and to eliminate incorrect links.

  • Your records go through an extensive clean-up prior to linking in order to maximize the probability of a correct link being made.
  • Local system modules rely solely on 4xx cross references in authority records. From our years of experience, LTI has an additional 4.5 million proprietary cross-references from incorrect headings to LC authorized headings.
  • We know you don't want "Paris" changed to "California. Park and Recreation Information System". We've blocked thousands of cross-references that can create problems in your catalog.
  • LTI has an additional 2.3 million name and subject authority records for which no LC authority is available. These records are for verification purposes and are not distributed to libraries.

Here is in-depth information on the basics of Authority Control and the LTI approach to it.

Consult a detailed explanation of the options that are available for authority control, then fill in a Work Specification Profile to begin the authority process with LTI.

Use the Cost Estimate Worksheet to help you estimate your cost for LTI's authority control services.

Once your database is up to date, you want to keep it that way with LTI's continuing authority services.

Questions? Contact us for more information.