July 2008

Dear Authority Control User,

Here’s the latest edition of the Backstage MARS Authority Control Newsletter. Read on for information on product updates and upcoming events. And thank you for your patronage.

If you have a new project you would like to talk to us about, please contact your sales representative or our general contact box: info@bslw.com. If you have any other questions concerning Backstage MARS, drop me a note or give me a call.

Yours,

John Reese
Vice President, Authority Services
Backstage Library Works
1-800-288-1265 x.249
jreese@bslw.com

In this issue:

• Those Anaheim Blues:
  MARS User Group Meeting Recap from ALA Annual 
• Not Just for Breakfast: 
  The Proposed Enhancements Survey
• BARE Necessities: 
  What is this rules engine thingy and how does it work?
• LC in the OC: 
  Library of Congress Authority Control Updates
• Taking it Serially: 
  Is there a series standard out there?

THOSE ANAHEIM BLUES:
MARS User Group Meeting Recap from ALA Annual

The Backstage Authority Contol user group met at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney this year to discuss authority control issues. Over 25 users attended our early-morning breakfast meeting.

Karen Anderson, Backstage’s resident authority control librarian gave a presentation on the workings of our Backstage Automated Rules Engine (BARE). John Reese talked about the MARS-to-MARS-2.0 software migration. We covered topics such as uploading data through the MARS website, processing LC genre, processing LC validation records, and the Library of Congress format change to MARC UTF8.

We also announced the upcoming release of the new MARS 2.0 Authority Control Planning Guide. We expect to have the guide available by mid-August.

The second part of our user meeting was a call for input from our users to let us know what future enhancements you want to see implemented. We handed out a listing of proposed enhancements to each user in attendance. This questionnaire asked for users to prioritize the proposed enhancements and add their own enhancement ideas. Read on for more on the results and the future of this enhancements survey.

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NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST:
The Proposed Enhancements Survey

Early polling is in from Anaheim, and the proposed enhancement chosen as most likely to succeed -- with seven can't-live-without-it, high-priority votes -- was "Report Series-Like Phrases on the R09 Report". Following up in a close second place was the "Automatic Death Date Fix", currently a custom option.

But that was just the handful who made it to our breakfast meeting, and we want to hear from all of our users.

So we've handed the questionnaire off to the make-it-look-pretty designer in our marketing department, and as soon as he's done tweaking, we'll send the inquiry out to all of you. Watch for a survey invitation in your email in the next week or so.

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BARE NECESSITIES:
What is this rules engine thingy and how does it work?

BARE -- the Backstage Automated Rules Engine -- is a set of JavaScript rules that we created to perform Bibliographic Validation and Authority Cleanup.

We use the rules engine to correct common errors in spelling, capitalization and punctuation and to otherwise clean up headings as much as possible in preparing bibliographic records for authority matching.

Each rule has a selector condition and an action. The selector condition can be a tag, indicator, subfield code, character string, or any combination of these, to define the scenario that will trigger the rule's action.

For example, one rule is set to look at any 1XX tag with a second indicator of 1. If that condition is met, then the rule creates a matching 6XX field and changes the second indicator of the 1XX to 0. This fixes the old policy of using a second indicator of 1 to indicate that the main entry is also used as a subject.

Some rules call up routines that perform predefined multi-step functions. For example, one rule looks for tag 022 and calls up a routine to check the validity of the ISSN number. It then corrects the number if possible. If the ISSN number can’t be corrected, it is placed into a $z, and a report entry is generated.

Many rules use lists of terms for their selector conditions, so one rule can be capable of making hundreds of changes. For example, some of our rules use lists to change direct geographic names in z subfields to their proper indirect format using two subfield z’s.

This rules engine structure is extremely flexible. BARE allows us to easily keep up-to-date on changes in cataloging policy and authority headings, and to accommodate a broader range of customer customization needs. We can flag a rule to run or not to run, as required. We can add new rules and remove rules that become obsolete. And we can easily modify the selector condition lists for a rule. For example, we altered the lists dealing with geographic names to reflect the recent change to Kosovo.

If you have custom requests that we can work through the rules engine, contact your MARS project manager or your sales rep. If you can see a way that the BARE system might improve overall authority processing, let us know on the upcoming enhancements survey, or shoot a note to me: jreese@bslw.com.

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LC IN THE OC:
Library of Congress Authority Control Updates

The following is a recap from the Library of Congress update presented to the ALA Authority Control Interest Group (ACIG) in Anaheim.

Non-Latin Script (Vernacular) — The Library of Congress will begin populating name authorities with non-Latin see references (4XX) in the authority record. They will harvest these from the 880 tags in the bibliographic record. The project began on July 13, 2008. Expect to see these in your next updates.

Genre/Form — The Library of Congress added a Genre/Form for Moving Images over this last year. They will soon be adding a Radio Program Genre/Form. The first 60 headings have been approved and will be distributed shortly. They are currently working with the Subject Analysis Subcommittee on Genre/Form to expand the disciplines covered to include areas such as art, drama, games, literature, music, law, and fiction. They are also looking to authorize a group of contributors. Currently only Library of Congress staff are adding Genre/Forms. The hope is to expand to PCC contributors.

Subject Validation String Records — The subject validation string record is made up of the main heading plus free-floating subdivisions. The Library of Congress is creating these to allow you to validate full strings. To date, 29 thousand records have been distributed by the Library of Congress. Validation records are delivered with your MARS 2.0 ongoing services.

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TAKING IT SERIALLY:
Is there a series standard out there?

One of the biggest challenges our Backstage programming staff encountered while writing the MARS 2.0 enhancements is the inconsistency of the series process.

It seems that most libraries follow the general outline presented by the Library of Congress, but many libraries have local needs that differ from what LC recommends. So we decided to accomodate these exceptions by making the serials process easy to customize.

If you have a particular series need that our standard service doesn't meet, please contact your MARS project manager and let us look into what it would take to implement changes to fit your series practices.

You can find the series tracing and delivery standard recommended by the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/marc/authority/. Our default settings conform to these recommendations.

The upcoming Planning Guide -- due out in August -- will include an overview of how MARS 2.0 processes series records. You can get a sneak peek at this description of our series process at http://ac.bslw.com/mars/temp/StandardSeriesProcessing.pdf.

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