What’s in a name: associated costs or authority work for artists’ names
Authority control is both the most expensive and important quality of any library catalog. Controlling headings for artists’ names can be more expensive than other personal names, as more time is required for the necessary research needed to determine the preferred form of name and variants. However, the cost associated with controlling artists’ names can be managed through effective use of reference materials and time. How artist headings are used also suggests that, over time, the initial investment can save a library from expenses associated with future catalog maintenance.
Cost-Effectiveness and Benefits of Outsourcing Authority Control
ABSTRACT This article illustrates the collaboration of three entities- the library, its online system and the authority service vendor-to achieve online authority control in a medium-sized academic library efficiently and cost-effectively. The authority service vendor checks and revises (as needed) the headings of the library's new bibliographic records, providing new authority records for them. Through a separate notification service, the vendor also provides revised authority records for the existing authority file, alerting the library when in-house online maintenance is needed. In this online environment, authority records and bibliographic records are maintained automatically by the vendor authority service. Thus, using various authority heading reports which can be generated by the local online system in conjunction with the notification service, the library concentrates its authority work on the elimination or correction of obsolete headings. The authority vendor services are effective and reduce t...
Shoeless Joe: Fantasy and the Humor of Fellow-Feeling
In his essay on Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Thomas Carlyle writes of a humor that manifests itself in smile rather than laughter. "Richter is a man of mirth," says Carlyle, whose humor is "capricious . . . quaint . . . [and] heartfelt" (15). The three adjectives represent for Carlyle the essence of what he terms "true humor" because they suggest Richter's enormous respect for humanity. "True humor," he goes on to say, "springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt, its essence is love; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper" (17). These smiles are not Hobbesian smirks of superiority1 but genuine signs of compassion for, sympathy toward, and empathy with the object of the humor. Carlyle further provides a direct link between humor and both pathos and nobility; the link is the smile of the caring man. For Carlyle, this smile is one of "fellow-feeling":