Tip for January 11th, 2016 | Updated September 7th, 2021
What are your back-to-school resolutions for your library? If ‘cleaning up’ or ‘organizing’ are on your list, I have just the tip for you—to help you clean up your subject tags!
If you have noticed a lot of odd or incorrect subject headings in your records, this tip will help you clean up those pesky entries. This will give you some good cataloging information—but further, your records will stand out when your patrons perform subject searches in Researcher and Search. Who doesn’t like good clean records? Let’s get started!
Changing Subjects through Authority Control
- From Tools in the sidenav, open Authority Control.
- Under Category/Type, expand the Subjects category, and you can see a list of all subject heading subtags.
- Select the subtag you want to fix, then search for the term in the search box at the top (e.g. ‘Dystopian’).
- Click on the term in your results, then click Edit Term at the bottom.
- In the Edit window, enter the term you want to use (e.g. ‘Dystopias’).
- You will notice that it will inform you how many records you will be modifying. Make sure this is correct, as it will modify this term for ALL records that have this as a subject heading. Ready to make some changes? Click YES.
Each change will spawn a utility in your operations queue—so you may not see your changes immediately.
With a few easy steps, you can start getting your records nice and uniform. If you have further questions please contact Customer Support at 800-347-4942.
Did you know? The word ‘authority’ comes from the Latin ‘auctor’, meaning ‘originator, promoter’—the same root as ‘author’.
How else can you improve searching for your patrons?
Check out our article on Researcher Best Practices, which contains a bunch of tips—like this one—on making searching easier. We have a bunch of other resources you may find helpful as well:
Recent Posts
Blog Posts
-
Winter storms–recompute due dates
created by
Jan 23, 2024
-
How to add reports in the new beta–you beta be trying it!
created by
Jan 16, 2024
-
Site-specific eBooks
created by
Jan 10, 2024
-
User-friendly–optimize your setup
created by
Dec 01, 2023
-
The gift of keyboard shortcuts
created by
Nov 30, 2023
-
Builder: customize your search
created by
Nov 21, 2023
-
Maps makeover
created by
Nov 13, 2023
-
Making search strings using advanced search
created by
Nov 01, 2023
-
Popular items: creating explore panes
created by
Oct 25, 2023
-
Creating a slideshow for spooky season–or any reason!
created by
Oct 17, 2023
Want more tips?
Sign up for the emails!
How helpful was this page?