Sounds good - I know other systems have had this functionality. Big caveat, I think, is that any support for this functionality should come with a way of identifying "system generated" authority files distinct from the "official" ones. This would permit better reporting and additional automated actions against these records and/or for cataloguers to be able to better identify, review and then "officialize" them by changing the 'automated' flag after any updates/review.
Our situation is that somewhere a long time ago (DRA / MultiLIS days??), our Unicorn-based records were in a system that had this feature alongside, I believe, an automated keyword generating feature. So we ended up with this HUGE authority list but the majority of them were questionable (generated from automated "650" keywords). I speculate that someone turned the feature on, and there wasn't any follow-up. So years later, we're left wondering if there's any "good stuff" in the authority records without LC control numbers, etc. but not having any apparent "hook" into easily determining which ones were cataloguer created vs. those created by the ILS's auto-authority making function. George George Duimovich NRCan Library / Bibliothèque de RNCan -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Yamil Suarez Sent: September 29, 2011 21:33 To: [email protected] Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Workaround for EG's current lack of automaticsystem generation of authority records? Hello, I was speaking with ESI and was told that EG currently does not automatically create "system generated" authority records, and I wondered what workarounds might be used out in the EG community? These type of authority records are also know as "stub" authority records. What I mean is that in some other ILS systems, when I import a new bib record the system will check if there are existing authorities records that matches the one listed in the bib record's authority controlled fields (author, subject,etc). If no match is found in the system, a new system generated authority record is created. For example, if I import a bib with an author, in the 100 field, that was not found in my system already. By the end of the import process, the bib would be imported and there would have been a stub authority record automatically created for that author. I know that right now I can just right-click in the EG MARC editor to create stub authority records by using the "create immediately" sub-menu in each bib. What concerns me is the several thousand bib records for electronic items for ebooks and streaming audio I need to import this year. Hopefully there are some workarounds out there. Also, I am interested in looking into finding partners to pay for developing this particular feature for EG 2.2 or later. Thanks in advance, Yamil
