Monthly authorities processing - Overview

Summary: Info for all TS staff concerning Backstage Library Works automated authority control, and instructions about record editing during monthly record processing. 

MSUL's process 

• Each month, new and updated bibs are harvested and sent to Backstage for processing

  • Only bibs with a cat date from the selected month are harvested and sent

• Processed bibs are usually returned within a day or two, and are loaded back into Sierra

• Existing bibs are overlaid with the newly updated bibs provided by Backstage
  • Any changes to bibs made by TS staff between harvesting and loading will be wiped out

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Backstage's process

Any bib records we send to Backstage receive the following upgrades:

• headings updated and/or changed to match national authority records
  • name and subject headings also include $0 URIs when available
• GMDs removed from the 245 and moved to an added 500 note
• 33X content, media, and carrier fields added where not present
• abbreviations spelled out in the 300 field and others
• corrections made to MARC coding

In addition, Backstage helps us keep our authority records up to date. Any new or updated authority records belonging to following categories are sent to us each month and loaded into the database.

• personal names
• corporate names
• conference names
• geographic place names
• LC subjects (LCSH)
• LC genre/form terms (LCGFT)
• nationally established series titles
• Genre/form terms from other authorized vocabularies:
  • Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
  • Guidelines on Subject Access to Individual Works of Fiction, Drama, etc. (GSAFD)
  • Thesaurus of Graphic Materials (TGM)
  • Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
  • Rare Book & Manuscript Section (RBMS) Controlled Vocabularies for:
    • Binding Terms
    • Genre Terms
    • Paper Terms
    • Printing & Publishing Evidence
    • Provenance Evidence
    • Type Evidence

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Changes ok to make during monthly processing

Some fields are protected in the overlay process, so changes to these fields will not be wiped out:

• 050, 090, 099, & 086 fields
• 866 & 867 fields
• URLs (856 field)
• bib Location
• bib Mat Type
• bib Suppression code

Other tasks that can proceed as normal:

• Overlaying on brief bib records with no cat date
• Adding issues to serials check-in records
• Edits to bib records that were cataloged before or after the indicated month
  • (i.e., if February bibs have been sent for processing, it's ok to edit January or March bibs)
• Edits to shelf-ready bib records
• Edits to order/item/check-in records
• Record loads

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Changes to avoid during monthly processing

• Any changes not covered above will be wiped out when returned records from Backstage are loaded into Sierra
• Given the speed with which processing takes place, it's easiest to put off changes until the loading is completed
• If changes are necessary:
  • make a note of the changes you made to the record
  • revisit the record after the loading process, and restore your changes

Use this flowchart as a guide:

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Project history

To implement ongoing automated authority control, Backstage first had to complete a retrospective update of ~7 million records in our database. 

• The extraction of these records began on May 20, 2016.
  • Any bib records created after May 20 were included in future groups of records sent to Backstage on a regular basis.
• Each record was given the upgrades listed above.
• Backstage also completely replaced our existing authority file with a newly updated and expanded file, drawn from headings in those ~7 million bib records.
  • The new authority file contained more than 2 million records. 
• Returned records were loaded over a period of weeks in Summer/Fall 2016.

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