Book Review: Authority Control in Organizing and Accessing Information: Definition and International Experience

Authority Control in Organizing and Accessing Information: Definition and International Experience. Eds. Arlene G. Taylor, Barbara B. Tillett. Binghampton, N.Y.: Haworth, 2004. 651p. $34.95 softbound (ISBN 0-7890-2716-X); $59.95 hardbound (ISBN 0-7890-2715-1). Published simultaneously as Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 38, no. 3/4, and 39, no. 1/2. The International Conference on Authority Control: Definition and International Experiences was held in Florence, Italy, in February 2003. It brought together many respected experts from Europe and the United States for a review of the current state of the art in authority control. The proceedings were originally published in Italian, and this volume represents the English version with a few additional papers solicited by the editors. (1) Almost half the papers were contributed by Italians. There have been a number of works published on authority control in the last two or three decades, but most have focused on the practical aspects of authority work in libraries. This is the first broad and comprehensive overview of the field since the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) institutes in 1979. (2) More than forty contributions are brought together to cover every aspect of authority control today, from international standards-setting developments to a variety of local and specialized projects that incorporate some aspect of authority control. The proceedings open with an address by Michael Gorman, who was also part of the 1979 institutes. In his usual curmudgeonly style, he gives an overview of the concepts of authority control and a critique of metadata schemas such as the Dublin Core. He argues that such metadata should be either abandoned or brought up to the standard of traditional cataloging norms. The rest of the proceedings are divided into five sections. The first is called "State of the Art and New Theoretical Perspectives." Barbara Tillett, who has been so instrumental in the world of authority control for many years, provides a valuable historical review of the last quarter century and elucidates current developments in the field, such as the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), changes in the concept of Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC), and the Virtual International Authority File. Arlene Taylor reports on a survey of teachers to study how authority control is taught in North American schools of library and information science. The results show general agreement on the importance of authority control, but few indications that students are learning much about it amid the other subjects competing for their attention. The second, third, and fourth sections form the heart of the book and will have perhaps the broadest interest and value. The full range of standards and activities around the world is described, in most cases by experts who are directly involved in the respective institutions and projects. The second section is called "Standards, Exchange Formats, Metadata." Gloria Cerbai Ammannati describes the efforts of the Bibliografie Nazionale Italiana to impose some kind of authority control on its records. Marie-France Plassard describes the work of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) with regard to authority control, and Glenn Patton discusses IFLA's Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records (FRANAR) model. Pino Buizza explores how the concepts of authority control have evolved from the days of the Paris Principles, and Alberto Petrucciani argues for greater attention to the relationships between authors and works, in the spirit of FRBR. …