MARC Authorities

Owned by Khalilah Gambrell
Last updated: May 20, 2021
6 min read

What is an Authority?

MARC authority records relate to the concept of authority control, so I want to spend just a couple minutes talking about authority control. This is a concept that libraries were early to embrace, and that others outside the library community have recognized as a key concept. 

As defined by Library of Congress (LOC): MARC authority records contain the standardized forms of names for people, corporate bodies (for example, societies, businesses, institutions, etc.), meetings, titles, and subjects. In doing this, authority records provide authority control. (View for more details) 

What is authority control? As defined by Library of Congress (LOC): Authority control means establishing a recognized form for an entity name and using that form whenever the name is needed as an access point in a bibliographic record. (View more details)

Additional details about Authorities 
- To gather works by or about the same person or topic (View example - William Shakespeare)
- To distinguish works by or about different people or topics that may be confused with each other (View example - Joe Williams) 
- For many US libraries, Library of Congress is the source of truth for authority records. Many US libraries do not create local authority records. Also some libraries multiple sources of truth with respect to Authorities. See examples of authority files.  I state this fact as we may want to store the Authority Source of Truth not just that it is in MARC format. 
- For the initial release, we are only supporting Authority records formatted in MARC. 


MARC Authority example (what a FOLIO librarian/cataloger sees/expects to see when using FOLIO)

Figure 1. Name authority record for Apple Computer, Inc. (Source: screenshot of the MARC record retrieved from Classweb.org) - from https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/15014


Commonly used MARC fields (See - https://www.loc.gov/marc/uma/pt8-11.html#pt8) 

1XX, 3XX - Headings Information Fields

  • 1XX - Main heading (authorized name) (see box 1)
    • 100 - Heading - Personal Name
    • 110 - Heading - Corporate Name
    • 111 - Heading - Meeting Name
    • 130 - Heading - Uniform Title
    • 147 - Heading - Named Event
    • 148 - Heading - Chronological Term
    • 150 - Heading - Topical Term
    • 151 - Heading - Geographic Name
    • 155 - Heading - Genre/Form Term
    • 162 - Heading - Medium of Performance Term
    • 180 - Heading - General Subdivision
    • 181 - Heading - Geographic Subdivision
    • 182 - Heading - Chronological Subdivision
    • 185 - Heading - Form Subdivision 
  • 3XX - Additional information related to the heading (see box 2)

4XX: See from tracings

  • Fields 400-485, the See From tracing fields, are used to identify unauthorized forms of headings and other variants not chosen as an authorized form (see box 3)

5XX: See also from tracings

  • Fields 500-585, the See Also From tracing fields, are used to identify different authorized forms of headings related to the authorized form in the 1XX field. (see box 4)

667-68X - Notes-General Information 
General notes are contained in field 667 (Nonpublic General Note) or 680 (Public General Note). The remaining 667-68X fields are used for specialized information. Except for fields 678 and 680, these notes often are not written in a form adequate for public display.

670 - Source Data Found ; citations

680 - Public General Note (R) | Note that provides general information about a 1XX heading for which a specialized note field has not been defined. The note is written in a form adequate for public display.

  1. For more details - please check out Slides 34 to 36
  2. Examples 
  3. Additional details

What a library user sees - Browse Subject Headings 


What a library sees - View title record 

FOLIO Requirements #1 - Store the Authority record   (UXPROD-2322) 

  • DEV Work 
    • mod-data-import > Create MARC Authorities
    • Store MARC authority record 
      • Record Source = MARC 
      • Future, Future phase we may support Record Source = FOLIO and possibly other Record Source = TBD
    • Performance testing 
    • Unit Testing 
    • API testing 


Questions NOT just for this requirement

  1. Does the MARC Authority record indicate it is an Authority record ? 
  2. Should we indicate the Authority controlled vocabulary used?
  3. Can we support different Authority records with different Authority controlled headings 
  4. What Authority MARC fields are required?
  5. With current ILS which MARC fields are the most challenging to manage? (e.g. data corruption) 
  6. Follow up on overlay support? 
  7. Follow up on ORCID too. 
  8. Would it make more sense to support just pulling LC authority files versus users loading these files?
  9. Do we need to create a 999 f f <<tbd subfield delimiter>> for displaying record via MARC Authority app or GET MARC authority record API
  10. Should we consider any punctuation in regards to validation?
  11. What are the most important MARC tags we must validate?
  12. Which MARC fields cannot be edited? 

FOLIO Requirements #2 - Retrieve/GET an Authority record for the Authority app (UXPROD-2969) 

  • For the authority app, we need a way to retrieve an Authority record.
  • For initial implementation we can use either <<TBD>> UUID. Not sure if it is SRS or the MARC Authority app UUID to retrieve the record. 
  • OR we can use the value contained in MARC Tag 001 to return View MARC authority record 
  • This record (see mockup to the right) will display in the  third pane
  • Depending on estimate have this API endpoint support retrieving multiple records; this will allow libraries who need to develop their own scripts/etc. 


View MARC Authority Record (Rough draft) 

FOLIO Requirements #3 - Search/Get Authority records for the Authority app (UXPROD-2942)

  • TO support the Authority app, we need a way to 
    • Search and Retrieve MARC Authority records 
  • We need a way to support 
    • searching by Identifiers (MARC 001, 035, ???) 
    • Searching by Main heading types (MARC 1XX) 
    • Keyword search 
  • User expectations for searching 
    • when searching just for authority records, I need to be able to search the following MARC Authority Format fields: 100 Personal name, 110 Corporate name, 111 Conference name, 130 Uniform or series title, 150 Subject, 151 Geographic place, 155 Genre. I also need to retrieve authority records based on the cross-references, i.e. the 4XX  and 5XX versions of all these fields. It is also useful to be able to search on the LCCN (Library of Congress Control number, field 010) and a system identifier, if possible.

Add a rough mockup 

FOLIO Requirements #4 - MARC Authority results list display

  • Support the ability to display 

    • Distinguish between established access points (1XX) and references (4XX)/(5XX) when searching.

  • Apply new pagination component (will be available with Juniper release) - STRIPES-701
  • Spike Results List Hierarchy ( STRIPES-739 - Getting issue details... STATUS )
    • Main headings (1XX) (aka access/authorized points) 
      • See from (4XX) (aka See references)  
      • See also (5XX) (aka See also from references)
  • Implement shortcut keys

Add a rough mockup 


Example from another system - Hierarchy display


Example from another system - how to distinguish MARC 1XX from MARC 4XX/5XX

FOLIO Requirements #5 - Edit/ PUT an Authority record ( UXPROD-2945 - Getting issue details... STATUS )

  • Depending on estimate, PUT endpoint should support sending multiple IDs in support of batch editing
  • Implement shortcut keys 

Rough mockup 

FOLIO Requirement #6 - Browse Authority records ( UXPROD-2943 - Getting issue details... STATUS )

  • Catalogers like to browse Authority records in order to identify errors, duplicates. etc. 

Example from another system