CASE STUDIES

The Bridge Consortium
Northfield, Minnesota
bridge.carleton.edu

With an interest in updating and maintaining their joint catalog, Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges
requested proposals for an automated authority control solution. Consortium staff compared
Backstage services with other vendors and were pleased with Backstage's responses and
level of customization.

"Backstage worked very hard to make sure all our questions were answered. We have been particularly impressed with the amount of customization Backstage has provided for our records as well as the scope and depth of the ongoing reports that they offer."

Sarah Beth Weeks
Head of Technical Services
St. Olaf College Libraries

"We have been pleased with the ongoing responsiveness of Backstage to our follow-up questions and requests. I would recommend Backstage to other libraries seeking similar services."

Carol Eyler
Head of Technical Services
Carleton College Library

CHALLENGES

The consortium's challenges prior to contacting Backstage:

• Catalog contained nearly 2 million bibliographic records and
  1 million authority records with a mix of both AACR2 and RDA
  formatting.
• Needed authority updates for 150,000 new records each year.
• Had to perform authority work in-house on bibliographic records
  for physical materials.
• Authority records for new headings needed to be loaded individually.
  

SOLUTIONS

The consortium uses Backstage services to:

• Validate and correct MARC records to match bibliographic headings
  against the Library of Congress databases.
• Update name and subject headings, as well as series and uniform
  title headings.
• Upgrade and enrich AACR2 and other non-RDA bibliographic
  records to meet RDA standards.
• Add new authority records to catalog that match headings in new
  bibliographic records.
  
• Deliver updated authorities with changes from Library of Congress.
• Separate out language codes in 041 fields into their own subfields.
• Match GSAFD headings against LCGFT (two genre files that are
  ordinarily treated separately from one another).
• Customize RDA enrichment to match local practices.
• Create alerts and update bibliographic records when authority
  records are modified, replaced or deleted.
• Subscribe to daily new bibliographic record processing and monthly
  authority control notification services.

RESULTS

The consortium is seeing the following results:

• Creation of consistent formatting and updated catalog.
• Elimination of manual, time-consuming, cumbersome processes.
• Display of correct headings when patrons perform searches.
• Proper see-references on headings as a result of daily authority
  control updates for new bibliographic records.
• Future discovery capabilities based on consistent RDA fields and
  data, next-day heading accuracy, and streamlined workflow.

The Bridge Consortium | Northfield, Minnesota | bridge.carleton.edu

For more information on Backstage's authority control and rda enrichment services, please contact us.