In conjunction with OCLC’s recent announcement of “adding FAST headings to selected WorldCat records”, Backstage is also preparing to make these authorities match-able and return-able should you choose to have this done via our authority control processing.
What this means right now is that the heading would need to be in this format for us to match against the FAST authority database:
6xx _7 … $2 fast
We would treat FAST subject headings similarly to how we treat other authorities from different genre databases. Both the 2nd indicator value of 7 and the $2 fast need to exist on the FAST subject heading.
Please note that we do not have the capability (yet) to match against 648 subject headings, which are Subject Added Entry – Chronological Terms. A brief example of one of these records is:
001 fst01355873
148 $a 1914-1918
448 $a World War I Period
We are working on getting the programming into place to handle these, but so far there only around 700 FAST authorities for these types of headings.
The full FAST authority database that is now available comprises nearly 1.7 million authorities.
Please let us know if you are interested in having us match your FAST headings against this new database. We are working on updating our collateral to reflect this.
Nate Cothran
Vice President, Automation Services
25 East 1700 South
Provo, Utah 84606
Phone: +1.800.288.1265, ext. 697
Direct: +1.801.342.5697