Planning an authority control project at a medium-sized university library

Authority control is a vital part of providing students and faculty with adequate access to collections in university libraries. Although many large research libraries routinely maintain authority control, small and medium-sized university libraries find it challenging to meet rising user expectations and provide adequate access in an online environment through appropriate authority work. The smaller libraries have to provide persuasive data to demonstrate to their library administrations that tight staffing situations make it difficult to perform in-house maintenance on authority work and keep up with the dynamic and constant changes of new headings for bibliographic records. This article offers a planning process on an authority control project at a medium-sized university library.