See authority records and cross references in Sierra Search/Holds function (Circulation)
Originally submitted by by Anne Morgan 03/28/2018
Authority records are available for Cataloguing and Acquisitions staff. Other staff assisting our patrons are unable to view these references which may result in less than full retrieval, such as missed authors with various spellings. e.g. Aleksievich, Svetlana,|d1948-
Another example is subject search for "gender role" yields no results when searching in the Search/Holds function; however, when in the catalog function, you'll see subject authority record with ">See Sex role".
Idea Value
Cataloguers spend a lot of time on authority control to provide good access to the database. For authors with variant spellings or subject headings that are not controlled, staff and patrons may not retrieve all available materials in the database. Staff unable to view Cross references cannot view helpful alternative topics.
The purpose of authority records are to bring together related items and to direct users to the authorized forms of names, titles, series, and subject headings. By not including authority records in the Search/holds function is excluding a major audience.
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Kayla Payne commented
Not having authority records and see references included in the Search/Holds function is a detriment to day to day circulation tasks. Some examples include:
Yang, Neon - searching Yang, J. or Yang, J.Y. (their former name) does not return resultsPatti Callahan Henry, who used to go by Patti Callahan. If you search "Callahan, Patti" in the Catalog function, it will bring you to the name authority for "Henry, Patti Callahan" but if you search it in the Search/Holds function, it just comes up with no results.
This can impair discovery for Circ staff who are searching within Sierra. They have to go to the OPAC to see the redirect.
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Elizabeth Swift commented
Our Public Services librarians and staff must see the authority records and see references. I did not realize that this was expected behavior until yesterday. A staff member asked why they could not find all the material about Mah Jong. We have titles with many different spellings, Mahjong, Mah jong, and Mah jongg. I thought they could see the authority records to see what is the authorized heading but they could not.
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Audrey Sumser commented
Not having access to authority records in Search/Holds is rather antithetical to library/reference work. Imagine a group of developers who couldn't code properly because the programming interface they need to do their job isn't available due to an arbitrary decision to assign its access to other staff. This choice helps nobody: the staff member, the customer, or the organization. Please immediately consider granting libraries access to authority records in the Search/Holds function so that ALL library staff can better serve their patrons.
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Bob Gaydos commented
Last week, Stark Library decided to grant the permission to view authority records (111) to Public Services staff so they could learn to troubleshoot failing searches. After some experimentation, we are learning the functionality to view authority records does not exist in Search/Holds like it does in the Catalog function.
Innovative, please extend this functionality to Search/Holds and everyone else reading this, please upvote this idea if you are in agreement. Thank you.