Authority Control offers those who are uncomfortable with the complexities of MARC records a simple way to maintain consistency in their bibliographic records. First off, Authority Control in Alexandria is always enabled and can not be turned off. After the initial launch of Alexandria, one of your first steps will be to import patron and item information. As you do this, Alexandria will create authority control records from your data. Alternately, if you are converting data from a previous version of Alexandria, the software will create a brand new Authority Control database from your existing records. From this point on, any time you add data to an authority-controlled field in Alexandria, your term is automatically added to the Authority Control database. This can be happen during future imports, manual entry of titles, or the conversion of an older Alexandria data set.
After typing the first three characters in an authority-controlled field, Alexandria will check to see if the newly-entered data already exists in your Authority Control database. If the newly-provided data is an exact[1] match against existing data, the field will auto-complete slightly lighter than the characters previously typed. At this point, if you <tab> out of the field, the auto-completed term will be used and your cursor will move to the next editable field. This way, you may add a more current term or select one that already exists.