Authority Control in VuFind
Starting with version 1.1, VuFind includes an authority control system. This page provides some details on how it is being used and how its application could be expanded.
Authority Index
The authority index lives alongside the bib index within VuFind's Solr instance to store Authority records.
The field schema is structured as follows:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| id | control number |
| fullrecord | full MARC authority record |
| marc_error | errors reported by the SolrMarc import tool |
| allfields | content of all human-readable MARC fields to augment searching |
| source | source of the authority record (i.e. Library of Congress Name Authority File, Local System, etc.) |
| record_type | type of authority record (i.e. Personal Name, Corporate Name, etc. |
| lccn | Library of Congress card number for authority record |
| heading | Primary legal heading for authority record (i.e. 1XX field) |
| use_for | Variant names for authority record (i.e. 4XX fields) |
| see_also | Related authority records (i.e. 5XX fields) |
| scope_note | Scope note |
| heading_keywords / use_for_keywords / see_also_keywords | Copy-fielded versions of heading / use_for / see_also used in full-text searching |
| first_indexed / last_indexed | Index dates used for tracking record changes |
Obtaining Authority Records
In addition to exporting records from your ILS, you may be able to load them from public sources. As of this writing, VuFind (starting with release 1.1) includes tools for loading Library of Congress Name Authority Records through an OCLC API.
Loading LC NAF Records
- The tool in harvest/harvest_naf.php will harvest records from OCLC to a harvest/lcnaf subdirectory within your VuFind installation. This may take several hours. Re-running the script at future dates will incrementally load new records and create a .delete file indicating which records have become obsolete and need to be removed from your index.
- After harvesting records, you need to do two things from VuFind's harvest directory:
- To import new records, run: ./batch-import-marc-auth.sh lcnaf marc_lcnaf.properties
- To delete obsolete records, run: ./batch-delete.sh lcnaf SolrAuth
- (note that Windows .bat equivalents to the .sh scripts exist if you are not in a Unix environment)
Authority Import Script
VuFind has a separate indexing script that uses SolrMarc to load authority records into the authority index. See Importing Authority Records for more details.
Bibliographic Records
Authority records are not currently explicitly referenced inside VuFind's bibliographic Solr index – it is assumed that authority processing is done externally and that bib records contain consistent headings. It may be worth doing some additional work to store authorized and item-specific forms of headings in the Solr “biblio” index to allow more precise searching.
Authority Search
Separate search systems have been created to allow author searching and browsing. VuFind has a simple Authority module that allows searching of the authority index, and the Alphabetical Heading Browse takes advantage of authority data. It is also possible to implement Recommendations Modules and/or Custom Autosuggestions to take advantage of authority data, though this work is not yet complete.
Old Notes
These notes date from the time that the authority system was under development, but they are retained for future reference.
