Merci beaucoup and vive la France!!
Thanks very much for this good news--I have heard that L.C. will make its
name authority files available on the web "later this year." Hopefully, we
will have the L.C. subject authority files available free soon also. As I
have recently learned in a survey I conducted of small art museum libraries,
many smaller libraries (that have worthwhile collections worth sharing)
cannot afford to subscribe to the cataloging utilities. Some of them are
doing copy cataloging from L.C. and other online catalogs. But because they
don't have access to the L.C. authority files, they can't check for needed
cross-references--and they may unwittingly be downloading (or cutting and
pasting) records that have used unauthorized headings. When these libraries
go online (which in most cases they will eventually), their records will
perpetuate problems that could have been caught if they had free online
access to L.C. authority records.
Joan M. Benedetti
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