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The Development and Current

Status of Authority Control at
the National Library of China
a
Gao Hong
a
Foreign Language Acquisitions and Cataloging
Department , National Library of China
Published online: 11 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Gao Hong (2008) The Development and Current Status of
Authority Control at the National Library of China, Cataloging & Classification
Quarterly, 46:3, 269-280, DOI: 10.1080/01639370802032460

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639370802032460

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 The Development and Current Status
of Authority Control at the
National Library of China
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Gao Hong

ABSTRACT. This article gives a thorough introduction to authority con-

trol at the National Library of China from several perspectives including
bibliographic services, the online cataloging center, acquisitions, and the
library’s integrated library system. It introduces the objectives, principles,
applications, solution to the problem, and concludes with comments and in-
sights on the issues surrounding the proposed NLC authority control system.
This article also discusses the importance of authority control for access.

KEYWORDS. National Library of China (NLC), Chinese name authority

database, authority control, FRBR, cataloging, bibliographic services

INTRODUCTION

Bibliographical Services
As China’s bibliographic center, the National Library of China (NLC)
is responsible for providing the cataloging service of CNMARC records
to library and information organizations all over China, as well as is-
suing the China National Bibliography. These functions are assumed
by the Acquisition and Cataloging Department, which is responsible for

Gao Hong is Acting Director, Foreign Language Acquisitions and Cataloging

Department, National Library of China.
Address correspondence to: Gao Hong, Foreign Language Acquisitions and
Cataloging Department, National Library of China, 33 Zhongguancun Nandajie,
Beijing 100081, China (E-mail: gaohong@nlc.gov.cn).
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, Vol. 46(3), 2008
Available online at http://ccq.haworthpress.com


C 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.
doi: 10.1080/01639370802032460 269
 270 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

acquiring, cataloging, and processing Chinese and foreign books collected

by the NLC; developing and amending cataloging rules and standards;
researching, compiling, and modifying the China Library Classification
and Chinese Subject Thesaurus; and the international exchange of books
and periodicals. Currently, the Acquisition and Cataloging Department has
twelve sections with nearly 200 employees, many of whom are multilin-
gual professionals with language proficiency in Chinese, English, Russian,
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Japanese, Germany, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabian, Indian, Korean,

Polish, and other languages.

Online Cataloging Center (OLCC)

Traditionally, Chinese libraries can be divided into three types: public,
academic, and special. Each type of library has attempted to explore online
cataloging.
The Online Library Cataloging Center (OLCC), supported by the NLC,
established a consortium for public libraries in 1997. As a third level con-
sortium, OLCC emphasizes unifying, planning, standardization, gradual
progress, cooperative development, coordination of management, and re-
source sharing. As the national center, OLCC is responsible for the creation
and maintenance of databases, organization of member libraries, creation
of standards, training, and so forth.
Local libraries download bibliographic records and submit their own
holdings to the OLCC. Currently, OLCC has 1061 users, primarily from
public libraries. As for bibliographic products, in addition to the Chinese
name authority files, there are databases for Chinese books; rare Chinese
books; Chinese doctoral dissertations; periodicals; materials from Japan,
Russia, and the West; publications of international organizations and for-
eign governments, and many featured resources such as rubbings, local
histories, genealogies, and so on.
Future objectives focus on:
r Integrating and enhancing the functions of existing cataloging utilities
and their services;
r Implementing simultaneous local and central updating;
r Integration with other systems;
r Facilitating cooperation with other online cataloging systems, national
and international;
r Developing the OLCC union catalog beyond a bibliographical utility
into a globally networked, Web-based information resource where the
 Gao Hong 271

end-user can access not only bibliographic and holdings information,

but also abstracts, full texts, images, sound files, and so on through
the union catalog;
r Exploring metadata schema to describe electronic resources and ex-
pand the coverage from classical to electronic resources, ultimately
creating a virtual union catalog that is available globally.
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Recent highlights of OLCC:

r Rapid development: It took less than two years from planning in 1997
to implementation in 1999
r High technology support: Information technology and network envi-
ronments have advanced in pace with plans to implement online cat-
aloging in China. Basically, system designs are based on distributed
processing technology, that is, a client/server model, which is better
and more effective than the centralized model requiring mainframe
and terminals
r Funding by the National Library of China
r In-house system existed first: Most libraries already owned their in-
house systems when online cataloging was implemented in China.
This situation is different from that in other countries

Sources for Acquisitions

Sources for Chinese books include books submitted to the NLC by
domestic presses, selective purchase of official domestic publications that
meet the NLC’s collection standards, and private and public donations.
Foreign books are mainly purchased through agencies and companies such
as the China National Publications Import and Export Parent Corporation,
the Beijing Foreign Publications Import and Export Trading Corporation,
the China International Book Trading Corporation, the China Educational
Publications Import and Export Corporation, the China Economic Books
Import and Export Corporation, and Blackwell’s Book Services.

Characteristics of the Library Automatic System

At present, the NLC uses Aleph 500 to carry out the work of both
acquisition and cataloging. This system is characterized by support for
multilingual and multiliterature cataloging and for both the CNMARC
and MARC21 format. It is an integrated library system that uses Unicode
 272 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

while allowing other languages such as Japanese, Russian, Korean, and

Chinese ethnical minority languages to be displayed at the same time in any
field or subfield in the same catalog. This enables multilingual literature
to be cataloged and displayed correctly in the OPAC, thus solving the
display problem of multilingual cataloging. Finally, the system has a rapid
upgrading speed and can deliver high quality statistics resulting from joint
establishment and cooperation.
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DEVELOPMENT OF THE AUTHORITY CONTROL

WORK IN NLC

The NLC is the first among China’s library and information organiza-
tions to carry out research on authority control theory, standard making,
and concrete practices.

Theoretical research and major rules making

Since 1990, based on China’s cataloging practice and according to the
criterion of IFLA’s Guidelines for Authority and Reference Entries and
the UNIMARC and MARC21 formats, the NLC has in developed and
published a series of standards and manuals. These are:
r Descriptive Cataloging Rules for Chinese Name Authority Data En-
tries
r CNMARC Bibliographic Format
r CNMARC Authority Format, 2002
r A Practical Manual for MARC21 Bibliographic Format, 2005
r A Practical Manual for MARC21 Authority Format, 2005
r Descriptive Cataloging Rules for Western Language Materials, 2003
r Cataloging Rules for Chinese Documents, 2005
r Classified Chinese Thesaurus (electronic ver-
sion)

This body of work indicates that the people’s understanding of authority

control has grown while guiding the work of authority control in various
libraries in China, laying a solid theoretical foundation for its practical
applications.
 Gao Hong 273

Authority Control Work in Mainland China

The establishment and maintenance of original authority data from a
variety of languages and cultural backgrounds is best achieved through
self-reliance; and authority control for Chinese names is no exception.
In 2003, in order to push forward the bibliographic authority work of
Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese libraries
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to accelerate the Digital Library authority work, and to maximize

the joint establishment and sharing of resources, the China Academic
Library & Information System (CALIS) Management Center, the NLC,
and The Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC) in
Hong Kong jointly sponsored and established the United Coordination
Committee on Chinese Name Authority. Its constitutional purpose
is to coordinate and plan, make standards compatible, and share
resources.
The task of the committee is to continue to seek common points, co-
ordinate the authority and research work of Chinese names in Mainland
China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas regions, promote Chinese
name authority work in related areas, and create name authority standards
that meet Chinese name authority standards at domestic and international
levels, while also being suitable for local use. In the spirit of collaboration,
the committee’s first aim is to establish a cooperative, sharing mechanism
for local authority files. Afterward, at a suitable time, it will take into con-
sideration the joint construction and sharing of authority files from various
areas.
At present, committee members conduct exchanges in the form of con-
ferences, forums, and e-mails, discussing the progress of the implemen-
tation of Chinese name authority standards in different areas. The inter-
national development trend is in this regard. The committee has played a
significant role in promoting the Chinese name authority control work.
From 2003 to 2007, the United Coordination Committee has held five
committee meetings on Chinese name authority in Beijing, Hong Kong,
Lanzhou, and Taiwan, and by a joint effort, the participating member li-
braries established the Chinese Name Authority Portal. This portal offers
one stop search as it includes the CALIS Name Authority Database, the
NLC Name Authority Database, the Chinese Name Authority Database
(Taiwan), and the Hong Kong Chinese Name Authority Database. On
November 7, 2007, participants of the meetings achieved the following
mutual understanding on topics related to Chinese name authority cooper-
ation and sharing.
 274 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

First, all participants supported publicly displaying the document format

for users to access.
Second, participants proposed that the coordination committee member
organizations may download each others’ standard records in the ISO 2709
format. Upon approval, each member organization will submit its own re-
quest for the download before January 31, 2008 to CALIS. If necessary, a
meeting may be held with participation from computer technicians. Third,
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with respect to intellectual property rights, the original catalog organization

code will be retained in the shared standard records. No one should uni-
laterally provide the standard records to any entity other than the member
organizations. Fourth, participants proposed to investigate the possibility
of the United Coordination Committee as the unified entity responsible for
submitting records to OCLC, to be coordinated by the representatives of
JULAC with OCLC. Fifth, further explore the principles and specifications
of database standards, to strive for better compatibility of catalogue styles.

The Scale of Name Authority Work

In 1995, the NLC set up a name authority group, specializing in the-
oretical research on name authority and the making of authority data. At
the initial stage, the group rearranged the name and catalog cards accu-
mulated by the NLC in the past several years and used computer software
to collect various authority data sources in the bibliographic database of
Chinese books. In the meantime, it consulted authoritative reference books
in various areas to make checkups and complementarities.
The NLC Name Authority database includes personal names, corporate
names, and titles. In April 2003, the introduction of Aleph 500 integrated
the creation of name authority data with the cataloging flow, exchanging the
independent and separate relationship between the bibliographic database
and authority database with real-time maintenance of the authority database
and the realization of bibliographic heading authority control. This brings
the authority control work of the NLC to a new stage. The authority
control of documents in Western languages has also realized an automatic
link between bibliographic heading and authority heading.
2007 marks the fifth year of the comprehensive complementation of
Chinese name authority in the NLC. The various links in name author-
ity work have become more standard and scientific than before. Chinese
books’ cataloging flow is classified as document description and heading.
The former adopts the ISBD standard and CNMARC format. Based on
the standard document description, the latter specifies the access points
 Gao Hong 275

of the books and provides authority forms of various name headings. The
NLC has thirty professionals in this regard, and they create 7000 pieces
of authority data every month on average. Up to the end of 2007, the total
number of Chinese name authority data has exceeded 600,000. The com-
prehensive authority control function has been fundamentally successful.
On the Web OPAC, people are able to search and browse the authority data
provided by the NLC.
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Data Scale and Characteristics

The scope of authority data includes name and subject authority:
r After ten years of accumulation, the data volume has become large in
scale, with a high rate of coverage for Chinese name headings
r The data structure is relatively complete, and the contents are detailed
r It covers individual names (84 percent), corporate names (9 percent),
titles (7 percent)
r Web OPAC provides search and browse functions of the authority
data

THE AIM OF AUTHORITY CONTROL WORK AT THE NLC

Realize the Aim of FRBR Access Control
According to the IFLA functional requirements of bibliographic records,
the NLC endeavors to use authority control to realize bibliographic access
control and establish an authority control system integrating manual main-
tenance with automatic maintenance in order to reach the following access
control objectives:
r search a specific literature listed in the catalog with exact accuracy;
r search all the resources concerning the same work, expression, or
manifestation;
r search all the works and expressions of a specific person, family, or
corporate body;
r search all the resources concerning a specific subject;
r search all the resources limited by other access conditions, such as
language, publication place, publication date, and carriers
 276 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

Actualize the Link Between Bibliographic Heading

and Authority Heading
The Aleph 500 system currently in use has preliminarily actualized the
link between Chinese and Western language bibliographic headings and
authority headings. When making catalogs, the cataloger searches relevant
authority records. If she or he finds headings relevant to the literature she
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or he catalogs in the authority records, and she or he can use the function
of heading link, replacing the index of relevant headings in bibliographic
records with the index of uniform headings in authority records. The search
system will utilize the reference index of the authority file to guide searchers
to correctly search for and acquire relevant information.

The Function of Identifying Identical or Similar Headings

Similar or identical headings should be attached with varied information
for identification and differentiation. These pieces of information include
birth date, death date, titles, corporate name with geographic definitive,
and others. The headings in the database that need this treatment in-
clude the same name for different persons, the same or similar name
for different corporate bodies, and the same title for different works of
literature.

Aggregation Function of Verifying Entities

When the same entity has various headings, catalogers shall identify
and combine them according to local rules. For example, we combine
Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and English language headings of Confucius
into one authority record, and provide links to the alternate form of the
heading or just provide them for references. Entities in the database should
be aggregated under the following circumstances:
r different names for the same person
r different names for the same corporate body
r different titles for the same work of literature
r the same work for literature in different languages
r the same work for literature in different mediums
r relevant literature
 Gao Hong 277

Standardize the data exchange function

We integrate the library authority system with the bibliographic sys-
tem and use the OPAC to provide authority navigations to users. Mean-
while, we proceed from the development of the Online Cataloging cen-
ter, take into consideration the actual requirements of member libraries
and users, and provide the function of downloading authority data. The
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authority record formats should include text format, ISO2709 format,

and XML. Additionally, in order to allow other countries to accept their
own person names and corporate names and in the spirit of sharing re-
sources and in accordance with the IFLA requirement of work inter-
nationalization, we have considered providing various MARC format
outputs for global sharing, allowing the name authority established by
NLC to be shared and referred to by cataloging institutions at home and
abroad.

PROBLEMS TO BE CONFRONTED IN THE FUTURE

Internationalization of Authority Work
International cataloging work poses challenges to authority control.
When practicing international authority control and conducting interna-
tional bibliographic data exchanges, we encounter many difficulties result-
ing from geographic, linguistic, and cultural differences that are obstacles
to the implementation of the FRBR user tasks. In China, the cataloging
work of different languages observes different cataloging principles, and
thus forms isolated cataloging systems. Although the different rules for de-
scription are all in accordance with ISBD, the names and subject headings
are constructed based on different principles due to the cultural differences
of different countries. Therefore, while it is not difficult to find a specific
piece of literature in the catalog, it is virtually impossible to search out
all the works by one person in different languages, carriers, and versions
in the current catalog environment. For example, there are four forms of
the heading for Lao Zi in the NLC databases: Lao Zi (Western languages),
(Japanese), (Chinese), and (Russian).
In a search environment without an authority system, one language
heading can only search out relevant literature in the same language. If the
user wants to find all the literary works of Lao Zi or concerning Lao Zi, he
or she should search in different languages in many tries.
 278 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

FIGURE 1.
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As illustrated, by referencing individual names and connecting entries,

not only can connections be achieved among document catalogs in the
NLC Western languages, Japanese, and Russian, but connections to the
standard catalogue in Chinese can be achieved as well. This enables the
collection of related references to the same entry in different languages,
which primarily actualizes the FRBR collecting function and obtains more
comprehensive retrieval results.

In the Macro Aspect of Chinese Name Authority Control,

No Authoritative Standard is Acknowledged
The CNMARC Authority Format is the only standard Chinese authority
cataloging format. In terms of cataloging rules, there is only one book
regarding this topic, Cataloging Rules for Chinese Documents (the second
version) published in April 2005. In the Mainland, there is no universally
acknowledged state standard in library circles. However, the cataloging
principles directly determine the searching forms and selection principles
of authority files. In the meantime, FRBR, FRAR, and a series of new doc-
uments such as the International Cataloging Principle Declaration (draft)
have come out on the international stage. Therefore, in order to realize
 Gao Hong 279

the joint construction and sharing of Chinese name authority control in

the Mainland, there is an urgent need to stipulate rules and regulations to
keep up with modern developments. Only in this way can we accelerate
the collaboration of the NLC and CALIS management center in the area
of Chinese name authority control.

In the Micro Aspect of Chinese Name Authority Control, There

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is No Common Understanding on Many Forms of Access Point

for Authority Data
At present, there are differences in the form of access point for Chinese
name authority in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Mainland China. In par-
ticular, the positions of nationality, dynasty, gender, profession, and other
elements and selection principles are not uniform in these areas. Some-
times, corporate names and words are abbreviated and simplified in differ-
ent ways in various regions, which leads to different forms of access point
for the same entity. Although these are not the principle problem, they are
still a great obstacle to the joint construction and sharing of Chinese name
authorities.
It is also difficult to choose the adjunctive elements of personal name, and
many people have the same name. According to one domestic researchers’
survey, the proportion of Chinese surnames to the total population is dis-
torted. Currently, there are 3000 to 3500 total surnames in Chinese. The
repetition of the same name is common in Chinsa, sharply contrasting with
the situation in Japan, the United States, and other countries. This is also a
problem when carrying out the name authority control work.

The Quality of Chinese Name Authority Database

is to be Improved Further
At present, most Chinese name authority-making institutions work in-
dependently. They are newly established and in the initial stage of devel-
opment and mainly focus their attention on the expansion of the quantity
of authority data. Furthermore, the cost of authority control work is high.
Such factors as excessively pursuing quantity and inflated costs for data
maintenance will affect the quality of data. Therefore, the appraisal and
maintenance work of Chinese name authority databases are not satisfac-
tory. However, cost appraisal, maintenance costs, and work amounts are
considerable, and to address this, various institutions must cooperate with
each other to ensure extensive information resources as the basis for data
 280 CATALOGING & CLASSIFICATION QUARTERLY

maintenance and to help reduce costs. Moreover, cooperation can improve

the quality of name authority databases and pave the way for the joint
construction and sharing of Chinese name authority data.
The Realization of FRBR User Tasks and the Improvement
of the OPAC Function
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When we look into the future, we can see that the OPAC design will show
two entities to the users: works and manifestations (versions of the works).
The OPAC display showing a search result set of manifestations will be
changed to “works” because, for most users, they are more interested in a
work than in a specific version of that work. If the user is only interested
in one particular version of a work, he or she could continue to have a look
at the relevant version.

CONCLUSION

The concept model of FRBR will eventually bring great convenience

to the user, and will help maintain the integrity of the catalog in the local
library, which will be helpful to the success of the shared catalog at the
state level. Today, to meet the domestic and global demands for shared
information resources and with further cataloging development, catalog
standardization will enter full scale development. In this stage, on the
one hand, categories of standardization will become more comprehensive.
Information volume contained in standard records will also continuously
expand and become more refined. We must continue to explore, summarize,
and formulate regulations, methods, and formats that are based on the needs
of our own library and are suitable for the national name authority control.
On the other hand, we must build a standardized system that combines
both local and national authority control. We should take the development
of the national union catalog center (OLCC) as the turning point, set up the
national standard control center, and release standard data at the national
level. We also should provide leadership and guidance to all the libraries in
the nation so as to promote the nationwide sharing of standard document
cataloging in Chinese and open it to the international community.

Received: September, 2007

Revised: December, 2007
Accepted: December, 2007