Name and subject authority
O N E L I N K I N T H E I N T E G R AT I O N O F D ATA
G. Wakuraya Wanjohi
18 December 2010
QUESTIONS
 What is the percentage of original cataloguing
you do in your library?
 What have you learned about the
establishment of authority records in your
course work at college/university?
 Has anyone of you ever heard about the book
Names of persons?
A QUOTATION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO (U of T) MAGAZINE (2005)
The Internet revolution comes knocking
U of T has already developed a portal to make
university libraries more accessible. Administered by
U of T for the entire province, the Ontario Scholars
portal enables students and faculty from across
Ontario to find any of the 30 million books in
Ontario’s university libraries or seven million
articles from the nearly 5,000 journals available
electronically. By way of an online search, students
can have a journal article sent to their desktop or
request a book through an interlibrary loan.
Since 2002, the Ontario Scholars Portal has
delivered more than nine million articles to
400,000 users. It has revolutionized both the
temporal and spatial use of libraries – with
students “using” the libraries from home,
often after “closing”. The Portal has also
enabled smaller universities to plug into U of
T Libraries - the fourth largest university
library system in North America – and has
put U of T on the leading edge of the delivery
of digital information.
Source: University of Toronto Magazine
Spring 2005
How is the University of Toronto able to accomplish
this feat?
Two main reasons
Cooperation

Adherence to standards
The situation in Kenya
At present Kenya does not have an integrated national
bibliographic network. This has led to a number of
disadvantages:
1.
There is no body to set standards for cataloguing in the
country;
2.
There is no system for checking if an item published in Kenya
(and not found in the LC database) has already been
catalogued by another Kenyan library.
3. There is no way to consult with
others about cataloguing,
classification and subject indexing
problems;
4. There is no uniformity in
classification of Kenyan materials;
5. There is no national system of
authority for Kenyan names;
6. The Kenya National Bibliography
cannot be an authority in the
absence of standards;
7. Complete coverage of all Kenyan
materials cannot be assured in the
absence of a national bibliographic
network;
8. Integration of data is impossible
without agreement on standards.
Name authority records
We need name authority records, in order to:
 Have uniformity of entry in one’s databases;
 Keep track of name changes and of variant
forms of names;
 Make possible the integration of data when one is part
of a system.
Practice of authority work in Kenya
 KNLS
 University of Nairobi
Difficulties in establishing African names
 There are different practices for different
languages;
 There is no uniformity even within one
language;
 There are few local authorities for
establishing names.
QUESTIONS
 Form of entry for African names
Some examples?
 Guidelines – which?
Subject descriptors
Use of LC subject headings
Comments?
PROBLEMS WITH LC SUBJECT HEADINGS
One. The subject headings were originally
intended for use in manual catalogues when a
system of pre-coordinate indexing was called
for. The subjects are therefore arranged in a
hierarchical system: main headings with
subdivisions and a subsystem of arranging
subjects under countries. For the same
reason, in many cases, natural language is not
used as is evident in subject headings like
Proverbs, African, etc.
Two. The Library of Congress is a
multi-million volume library. Therefore, in
addition to very general subject headings,
there is a vast system of very specific
subject headings, resulting in an enormous
total number of headings: the printed
subject headings now consist of five very
bulky volumes.
DISADVANTAGES OF USING LC SUBJECT HEADINGS
1. The use of inverted headings for phrases like
Proverbs, African rather than the more
natural African proverbs;
2. One may end up with too many subject
descriptors for relatively small databases or
the use of very specific subject descriptors
when a more general term would be more
appropriate in the library's context.
3. For computerized libraries, the use of the
majority of subdivisions is in many cases
outdated since it can be substituted by using
subject descriptors in combination;
4. For those used to British rather than
American English, the use of American terms
rather than British terms presents problems
in searching.
5. The use of American English in
spelling for people used to UK
English is another difficulty;
6. African (or Kenyan) concepts are
not catered for.
FOR DISCUSSION
 Use of essential subdivisions, e.g. under
voluminous authors like Shakespeare,
under uniform titles like Bible.
 Free-floating subdivisions like:
Evaluation
Environmental aspects
NATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHIC NETWORK
REQUIREMENTS
 Training of cataloguers to the highest
international standards;
 Agreement on lead organizations for
cataloguing Kenyan material in the various
subject areas;
 Agreement on depth of cataloguing for various
categories of materials;
 Agreement on broad subject descriptors;
 Agreement on software for the system.
Objectives of a National Bibliographic Network
1. To catalogue an item (book, serial,
audiovisual or electronic file) only once,
using internationally accepted bibliographic
standards;
2. To make this cataloguing record widely
available;
3. To indicate the location of the catalogued
item.