Authority files are dictionaries containing the correct spelling, punctuation, and word spacing for each bibliographic attribute they represent. They ensure data consistency and integrity in your catalogue and assist your school community to search and navigate your catalogue easily and effectively. Infiniti has five conventional authority files; author, subject, genre, series, and publisher. If integrated with your school's learning management system a sixth authority file for curriculum tags may also be present. Librarian privileges are required to manage authority files which are created either automatically via importing MARC21 records, or manually via keyboard entry during cataloguing.


Maintaining Authority Entries


New authority entries are automatically added to their respective authority files when z-cataloguing, importing MARC21 records, and importing SCIS authority files. Infiniti also provides checks during original or manual cataloguing to display approved authority entry choices from respective authority files.


Go to: Menu > Authorities > {authority type}


For each authority type you can perform the following actions to achieve the described result:

  1. for specific entries.
  2. Show Unused - entries for this authority file. Note: Unused authority terms are hidden by default.
  3. - an entry to the authority file.
  4. - import author and subject authority files.
  5. - remove unused entries from this authority file.
  6. - edit specific entries. Note: This process corrects all occurrences of the incorrect entry.
  7. - Merge From (incorrect entry) and Merge Into (correct entry). Note: This process corrects all occurrences of the incorrect entry.
  8. - remove unwanted entries after confirming your action. Note: Only entries with 0 uses can be deleted.
  9. View Report on titles and locally recorded table of contents for each entry.
  10. - add create a new entry for that authority type.
  11. - upload custom icons for genres. 


For the subject authority file you can also perform the following actions to achieve the described result:

  1. for:
    1. All Subjects.
    2. Subjects with See References.
    3. Subjects with See Also References. Note: Some Subjects may have both See and See Also References.
  2. Display the list in:
    1. Relevance order. Note: Relevance order is the default display order and displays the results with closely matching terms appearing at the top of the list.
    2. Alphabetical order.
  3. - maintain See and See Also References for subject headings.
  4. View Report on titles and locally recorded table of contents, and see count of See References and See Also References for each subject heading entry.


See Reference And See Also Management


Note: Schools subscribing to SCIS may choose to import the SCIS MARC21 Subject Authority File and/or Author Authority File, and/or Series Authority File.


Searching authorities


When searching authorities, it is better to only use part of a heading so that all entries with that term appear in the list and possible duplication can be seen or highlighted by Infiniti.
 
This enables you to keep all related headings on the screen while you check/update/merge them. Searching for an exact match will only give you that heading on screen, while just scrolling will give an endless scroll.  eg.  search in subject authority for 'Great Britain history fiction'.  
This returns a number of headings and any of them can be updated while they all remain on screen. Similar headings will be highlighted by Infiniti to aid in merging if the Unused headings is ticked.
Anomalies can be identified and incorrect formats corrected while all headings remain on the same screen.
 
Currently there is no export of authority lists unless you wish to copy and paste smaller lists from the screen to Excel.


Similar Authority Entries


If you choose to display unused authority entries, the authority engine will examine entries to try to detect entries that are similar and should perhaps be merged into a single entry. Entries suspected of being similar will display on a light yellow background to assist identification. Note: Similarity analysis is based mainly on punctuation and case and therefore may not highlight all entries that are the same.