The Ohio State University

After a lapse of several years, the Technical Service Memorandum publication is being resumed.

As procedures are established or changed because of the online systems in Technical Service areas, issues will be distributed for your information. The mailing list will include members of the Administrative Staff Conference, Public Services Department Heads, and Technical Services Steering Committee.

Some additional copies will be made available at the Assistant Director's Office of single sheets for distribution by a department head, supervisor, etc.

Function of The OSUL Authority Files

1. Old name authority file: This file will continue to serve as a record of headings and references which are present in the card catalog. It will be used as a resource in establishing AACR 2 headings when no LC form has been found. Use of this file will also be necessary to complete withdrawals from the card catalog. Authority slips for Chinese headings which include the Chinese characters will be retained rather than discarded after the headings are verified on LCS and as necessary cross-references have been added. These slips will be interfiled in (or stored in a separate drawer of) the old name authority file.

2. AACR 2 file: This file will serve as a record of headings which have not yet been added to LCS or which are awaiting verification and/or addition of cross references to LCS. Once a heading has been given verified status and appropriate cross references have been added to LCS, the AACR 2 file slip for the heading will be discarded (or returned to the old name authority file in the case of transferred slips with cross references indicated and Chinese headings with characters). Consequently, this file should remain fairly small. Slips for added entries for all manually cataloged titles (analytics, and non-Roman alphabet titles not transliterated -- Arabic, Chinese and Hebrew) will have to remain in this file until online data collection is possible. Authority slips for main entries for manually cataloged titles may be submitted to AFS personnel for verification of these headings on LCS after the short records have been added through optical scanning.

3. LCS headings file: This file will serve as the official OSUL authority file and will be used by catalogers and editors for authority checking involved with original and copy cataloging. If a heading is found on LCS with verified status, no further checking in the card authority files should be necessary.

Heading References on LCS

As of June 1, 1982, Technical Services will begin entering some author, subject, series, and uniform title cross-references into the LCS headings files. Although initially the manually added cross references will be in all upper case letters, the benefits to the LCS users far outweigh any concern about the use of all upper case in these references.

Due to limited staff, Technical Services must be efficient in the allocation of available resources and thus cannot afford to enter cross-references which will later be available from the LC authority tapes. Thus, only certain categories of headings may have cross-references on LCS prior to the loading of the authority tapes. These categories are:

1. Subjects new to LCS after December 1980,
   
2. *Subjects subdivided geographically,
   
3. *Subject phrases which are inverted,
   
4. All series headings,
   
5. Author and uniform title (headings) entries not yet on the OCLC Name Authority Index which are established by original catalogers, and
   
6. *Cross references from OSUL pre-AACR 2 headings, which are present in the card catalog, to the AACR 2 heading in LCS: to be done only when the heading has numerous titles and the AACR 2 heading files under a different letter of the alphabet than the pre-AACR 2 heading.

7. *Cross-references from ACQ continuation order entries to the heading used in LCS.