Review: Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control

Abstract

Authority control is not a field of cataloging in which monographs are terribly common; the ethics of any cataloging or classification specialization even less so. Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control, as a search of an online catalog will reveal, is represented by the Library of Congress subject headings “Name authority records (Information retrieval)” and “Cataloging--Moral and ethical aspects.” Indeed, the Library of Congress (LOC) online catalog only lists this one book on the subject. Regardless, this compilation of essays is thoughtful, in-depth, and cutting edge. The editor, Jane Sandberg, has previously published on Resource Description and Access (RDA), BIBFRAME, and authority control, and brings a discerning eye in her selections for this book. As she notes in the introduction, “this is the first time that scholars have come together to look at multiple facets of name authority control with the goal of working toward an ethical framework,” something that has become even more urgent as issues around linked and big data, social media, and privacy increase. The essays are organized into four sections exploring various topics in great depth, and a fifth, which proposes some solutions to the problems presented in the prior parts. This review will focus on those topics of greatest interest to Cataloging & Classification Quarterly readers, but does not attempt to be comprehensive.