NACO > Yale Policies for NACO Independence

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General Comments

Yale University Library is an independent NACO institution. With this privilege comes responsibility for developing and maintaining our own internal quality control procedures. If the overall quality of our records were to become unacceptable, our institutional independence could be revoked by the Library of Congress.

The following guidelines will be used to help the NACO Coordinator and members of the Authorities & Identities Advisory Group to determine when an individual cataloger may be granted independence for NACO work. The guidelines are intended to ensure that each cataloger is reviewed in a consistent and fair manner. 

Catalogers who have achieved independence are no longer required to submit their authority records for review; they may produce their own records. However, they are responsible for proofreading their records carefully and sending any BFM notices to the NACO Coordinator. They are encouraged to ask for advice and to submit any particularly difficult or unusual headings for review. If an independent cataloger has had a long absence from doing NACO work, it is recommended that they submit authority records for review when resuming NACO activities.

Types of Independence 

Independence will usually be granted in stages, with each stage corresponding to a particular type of access point: 

• Persons
• Families
• Corporate Bodies
• Places
• Works and Expressions
• Series

These stages do not have to be completed in any particular order.

Review Process

Reviewees may send no more than 10 records at a time (fewer than 10 is fine) and must wait until their reviewer has responded before sending another batch. Each batch may include a mix of entity types.

Reviewers must return the records to the reviewee within 2 weeks of receipt. If the batch contains a record that is particularly problematic (and the reviewer has had to ask the NACO Coordinator to forward a query to LC), then the reviewer should return the batch minus the problematic record and inform the reviewee that they may send another batch while the reviewer is waiting for the response from LC. Reviewers taking significant vacation or other approved release time should inform their reviewees and make interim arrangements as needed (e.g., asking reviewees to hold their records or submit them to a designated temporary reviewer).

Both quantitative and qualitative standards will be used to evaluate the records submitted for review (see below). Each record will be counted as either being of acceptable or unacceptable quality. 

Quantitative Standards 

The cataloger must contribute a minimum number of authority records of acceptable quality to be eligible for independence for a particular heading type. The minimum numbers required are:

• Persons: 50 records
• Corporate bodies: 25 records
• Places: 10 records
• Works and Expressions: 25 records
• Series: 25 records 

For each record type, the minimum number of acceptable records must be submitted consecutively and the number of unacceptable records within the sequence should constitute no more than 10%. For example, if a cataloger has submitted 60 personal name records in the last couple of months, 54 of the 60 records must be of acceptable quality for the cataloger to be granted independence. 

This system allows the reviewee to make mistakes during the initial "learning phase" without being penalized.

Qualitative Standards 

The cataloger must contribute a mix of new and updated authority records. The cataloger must also contribute a mix of "simple" access points, and access points that require cross references.

Ideally, the cataloger will contribute a broad range of authority records that demonstrate the application of a variety of rules. Some of the types of access points that it is desirable to see demonstrated include: 

• names in direct and indirect order
• compound surnames
• names containing articles and prepositions
• expansion of initials
• pseudonyms vs. real names
• name changes
• authors vs. non-authors
• pre-1800 names
• government bodies
• subordinate body vs. direct entry
• title changes
• numbered vs. unnumbered series
• subseries
• series-like phrases

If the cataloger does not encounter a broad enough spectrum of headings in their everyday work, the NACO reviewer may devise some other method for testing the cataloger's knowledge (e.g., asking the cataloger to establish a heading for a hypothetical item or for an item found in the catalog). Such testing should be kept to a minimum, however, and used only as a method of last resort.  

If the reviewee regularly reports duplicate authority records encountered in the LC/NAF, or discovers errors in existing authority records, the reviewer should interpret this as additional evidence that the cataloger is developing the qualitative expertise needed to function as an independent NACO contributor.

Major vs. Minor Errors

To determine whether a record is of acceptable quality, NACO reviewers will differentiate between major and minor errors using the chart below as a guide. Generally, a record containing a major error is not considered an acceptable record. A record that contains multiple minor errors may sometimes also be considered unacceptable, based on the NACO reviewer's judgement.

Document originally created by the Authority Control Advisory Committee; revised and maintained by the Authorities & Identities Advisory Group.

Comments to: Tachtorn Meier and Jia Xu