Name Authorities - Adding Death Dates
As of summer 2006 the Library of Congress allows the addition of death dates to name authority records with open birth dates. The revision of LCRI 22.17 is described here.
- MSU Libraries will follow the latest LC/NACO practice and if the NAR (name authority record) has added the death date to the heading for the person, we will overlay the local authority record and use the fuller form in the bib record. Bibliographic file maintenance should be done if necessary.
- If you encounter a death date [or a birth date] for a name that is established or already in use in our (including WorldCat) catalogs without such date, you should put the new date information in a 670 on a NACO record (new or revised) for that person, without changing the form of the heading (unless a change is needed for another reason).
- If you think the person with an open-ended date is famous or well-known and the death date should be added to the name heading, confer first with the NACO coordinator.
- If the author is pre-20th century, a prefix b. or d. must be used before a single date. On these records, do not supply the missing death or birth dates if you discover them. Add the new date information in a 670 instead.
General instructions for verifying name & subject entries:
- Use Connexion’s Controlled Headings feature to ensure that the latest form of the heading is being used. Note that this feature does not automatically find the correct heading in all cases; manual searching of the national authority file will often be necessary.
- If the latest form of a heading is not being used, overlay any existing authority record in the local online catalog and make changes to bib records.
- If more than 5-10 bib records need changing, please inform the Authorities Coordinator in Catalog Maintenance, who will make those changes to the bib records.