Authority Control for Metadata in Institutional Repositories

Abstract

One of the core principles of cataloging is to catalog with the user in mind. The search needs of patrons when searching in institutional repositories are different from that of traditional research in library catalogs and discovery layers. An institutional repository aims to promote, showcase and market the innovative scholarship produced by faculty and staff at a particular academic institution. A potential user may wish to find all the scholarship produced by an institution, its colleges and departments, or its individual researchers. Or a patron may wish to see what a cross section of faculty are producing in a specific area, subject or topic. Because of these specific user needs, authority control of both names and subjects is vital for the accessibility of resources and for the satisfaction of the end users. Authority control in institutional repositories is particularly important but it is often lacking. A successful search by the patron is determined by the ability to find research assets by creator name, their academic and unit affiliations, and by subject headings in the search bar. Authority control also enables access points/hyperlinks within individual bibliographic records to link to other records and resources with similar metadata. And finally, these forms of consistent metadata ensures interoperability between institutional repositories and traditional discovery layers. This presentation seeks to illustrate the importance of authority control, both name and subject, in general, and how this librarian specifically instituted these features into his academic library’s institutional repository, Adelphi Scholarly Works, an instance of the platform, Esploro by Ex Libris.