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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 53| October 2001
Expert Advisory Group on Authority Record Delivery
The National Library of Australia has a strong commitment to maintaining the national authority file and promoting the use of authorities for quality records and retrieval. Kinetica is seeking to improve the sharing of authority data between Australian libraries. The level of authority work performed by Australian libraries on ABN and Kinetica has always been quite low and new strategies are needed. In March the Kinetica Authority file was made available through KineticaWeb for the first time and further developments of this service are planned including support for searching of non-preferred terms.
Improving the mechanisms for delivery of authority data are also seen as a way of making Kinetica more effective for authority work. The Kinetica Advisory Committee at its meeting in August recommended that a new Expert Advisory Group be established to investigate issues relating to the delivery of MARC authority records from Kinetica.
The group, to be known as the Expert Advisory Group on Authority Record Delivery, or EAGAD, consists of Liz Neumann (University of Melbourne), Nancy Li (University of New South Wales), Susanne Moir (State Library of New South Wales). Elisabeth McDonald (Australian Film, Television and Radio School), Glenda Henderson (UNILINC), Patricia Scott (University of Adelaide and Kinetica Advisory Committee Representative), Deirdre Kiorgaard (National Library), with Margaret Kennedy (Kinetica) as Secretary.
EAGAD will identify the needs of Kinetica customers in relation to authority records, and investigate ways in which current delivery methods can be enhanced to better meet those needs. The feasibility of new services to deliver authority records in a timely and efficient manner will also be determined.
The group will specifically consider ways of increasing usage of the Kinetica Authorities service and improving the process for obtaining authority records from external services such as the Research Libraries Group (RLG) Authority file. Issues relating to both Kinetica and local library management systems will be considered. It is hoped that streamlining the process of obtaining and loading authority records from Kinetica will lead to an increase in the amount of authority work carried out in the National Bibliographic Database.
EAGAD will operate via teleconference and email. It met for the first
time in September, and will report to the Kinetica Advisory Committee by
August 2002. The work of the Group will be reported through the kinetica-l
email list. The web page is atwww.nla.gov.au/kinetica/eag_ad.html
Margaret Kennedy
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au