Hi Bob, Thanks for your reply. Actually, we know about the blind references report, and I have a copy in front of me. But, at least in our system, just because an authority record is not linked to any bibs does not mean that it should be deleted. You seem to be thinking the same way when you say authority records will be reviewed before they're deleted. Sometimes a heading is not linked to any bibs, but it SHOULD be. For instance, we had the heading Snook, Harry James, 1886- in our system. The correct authority, Snook, Harry James, b. 1886 came in from Backstage, but did not overlay Snook, Harry James, 1886- . I'm not sure exactly why, whether we could have had that not happen or what. Also, we have a huge lot of series authority records, traced, that are unlinked to anything, because we had the series in a bib record as a 490 0 and our 490's are not authority controlled. So when the series records came in, they couldn't find what bibs to link to and update. But they SHOULD be linked and I suppose we need to clean this up manually sometime when we have time (ha ha ha). Again, we may have been able to prevent this from being an issue, but we didn't so there we are. Then there is the issue of the higher levels of the hierarchy. For instance, we might have the heading Harrison, Mary--Criticism and interpretation in our catalog, but NOT just the heading Harrison, Mary. But we have an authority record for Harrison, Mary unconnected to any bibs. Getting records for all levels of the hierarchy is an option on the Backstage profiles, which we checked because if we don't, then how would we get notified of changes to Harrison, Mary? Maybe (probably) we've got a lot of unique problems. But what I'm interested in, is what is your "review of suppressed authority records" going to consist of? What are you looking for and how are you going to tell people how to look for it? Patricia -----Original Message----- From: bslwac-bounces+dragonp=ecu.edu@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:bslwac-bounces+dragonp=ecu.edu@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Bob Thomas Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 1:38 PM To: Backstage Library Works Authority Contol Listserv Subject: RE: [BSLWAC] Procedures for weeding vis a vis authority recorddeletion Patricia, Good news. The Blind References Heading Report does just what you want. I know, the name doesn't indicate it, but this is really a report of authority records that are not linked to headings in any bib records. The report is described on Page # 105920 in the manual. One thing to note, authority headings are linked to bib headings even if the bib record is suppressed. So the report won't give you the right results until the bib records are actually deleted. We plan on using this report to identify the records that need to be deleted, suppressing the authority records, creating a review of the suppressed authority records, exporting the file for Backstage, then actually deleting the authority records. Complicated, but no manual one-by-one record steps involved. Hope it all works out like we think it will. Bob Thomas Integrated Systems & Cataloging Librarian Western Washington University -----Original Message----- From: bslwac-bounces+bob.thomas=wwu.edu@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:bslwac-bounces+bob.thomas=wwu.edu@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Dragon, Patricia M Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 9:55 AM To: bslwac@mailman.xmission.com Subject: [BSLWAC] Procedures for weeding vis a vis authority record deletion Hi everyone, At East Carolina (Backstage customers since April 06), we are undertaking a major weeding project and deleting a vast number of bib records. We are assuming that part of our procedure will have to be an analysis of authority records linked to those deleted bibs, and determining whether the linked authorities also have to be deleted and reported to Backstage as deletes. We're imagining some kind of decision tree: Is this the last instance of this heading in the database? Is it a DLC record (as opposed to a brief system-generated record)? Is there another heading in use of which this heading is a part? You can see this can get rather complicated, and we need a way to explain this to students. Does anybody have procedures for weeding and reporting authority deletes? How do you decide which authority records are candidates for deletion? Does anyone have any automated means of pulling out auths to be deleted, or must humans evaluate each heading? We have a Horizon System, by the way, but I welcome thoughts from those with any ILS. Thanks in advance for your help, Patricia Patricia M. Dragon Cataloging Dept. Joyner Library East Carolina University Greenville NC 27858 (252) 328-0296 dragonp@ecu.edu _______________________________________________ BSLWAC mailing list BSLWAC@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bslwac _______________________________________________ BSLWAC mailing list BSLWAC@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bslwac