Coping with the storm: Automating name authority record updates and bibliographic file maintenance

The purpose of this paper is to present a process, as a proof-of-concept, that automates the tracking of updates to name authority records (NARs), the downloading of revised NARs into local catalog system, and subsequent bibliographic file maintenance (BFM), in response to the programmatic manipulation of the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF).

A proof-of-concept process to automate NAR updates and BFM in local catalog, using OCLC LCNAF SRU Service, MARCEdit, XSLT, and AutoIt, is built and subsequently tested using data from both test and production catalog servers at Michigan State University Libraries.

The proof-of-concept process tested is proved to be successful in general though scalability and diacritics issues have to be addressed before it can become fully operational in a production environment.

This process enables libraries, especially those without third-party authority control service, to handle the phased reissuance of LCNAF and related BFM in an automatic fashion with minimal human intervention.