[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] authority control vendors

[Jason Stephenson]

Quoting Julie Lespinasse <jdlespinasse at yahoo.com>:

> We're getting ready to move to Evergreen, but are currently using  
> another ILS.  We were wondering what authority control vendors  
> people are using, and if you're satisfied with them.  We've been  
> using LTI, but they recently stated that we might not be that happy  
> using them with "open source"  (their quotes, not mine).  So I'm  
> wondering if we'd have problems getting our authority files to come  
> over, and once we do come over, if we'd have problems updating them. 

We migrated our authority records from our legacy ILS. Granted, they  
were pretty bad to begin with. There are some scripts for importing  
authorities during a migration or in batches. You'd want to export  
them to a MARC file, similar to what you'd do with your bibliographic  
records.

There's another script in the support scripts and recent versions of  
Evergreen install it into the main binary path on the server,  
authority_control_fields.pl. This can be used to link your bib records  
with authorities.

I believe Berklee in Boston would like to see some improvements to  
this program or have a new one that works with authority control sets  
as setup in the client. That sounds like a good idea to me, but  
authority_control_fields.pl worked well for us. I've also blogged  
about running it in batches:

http://blog.mvlcstaff.org/2012/09/howto-batch-authority-control.html

If you don't understand all of the steps, just point your server  
administrator or your hosting provider at that blog and they should be  
able to do it.


>
>
> Has anyone completely given up on authority control?
>
> If not, please tell me what vendor you use and if you're satisfied with them.

We use Backstage Library Works, and they have been very helpful. We  
changed some of the procedures that we use with them after our  
migration to Evergreen, and I think it is smoother now than it was on  
our proprietary ILS.

We send batches of new records to their FTP server on a quarterly  
basis. We get updates from their FTP server, also on a quarterly  
basis. I wrote this software to automate the process on our end as  
much as possible:

http://git.mvlcstaff.org/?p=jason/backstage.git;a=summary

The software will get some new code in October, once I've tested the  
changes, to also run authority_control_fields.pl whenever authorities  
are imported or updated.

I have informed Backstage of the software and suggested that they  
recommend it to their Evergreen customers. I don't know if their  
support staff can really answer questions about it, but you could  
always ask on the list or in IRC. If I'm around I'll answer any  
questions.

I know that is probably more information than you wanted, but I wanted  
to point out that "open source" is not a problem when it comes to  
authority control, and that there is a solution out there. (Plus a  
little shameless self promotion never hurts.)

HtH,
Jason


>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Julie
>



-- 
Jason Stephenson
Assistant Director for Technology Services
Merrimack Valley Library Consortium
Chief Bug Wrangler, Evergreen ILS