Finding and Downloading Authority Records
Every author that is part of the Perseus Catalog also has an authority record that is available for download as a MADS record from the mads directory in catalog_data. When a new (e.g. un-cataloged) author is identified in the process of cataloging a new edition, however, an authority record will need to be either downloaded and enhanced or created for them. This section provides an overview of the basic steps involved in determining if there is an existing authority record and how to download it.
Due to the ever ongoing expansion of the VIAF and the Authors-Abbreviations-Editions spreadsheet lists of Greek and Latin authors, it is often a fairly quick task to identify many authors of works as well as if they have an authority record. Searching the spreadsheet can be a useful first step because it will also provide a link to the authority record if one has already been found as well as a list of the author's identified works and their canonical identifiers.
If the author of a work is not found on this spreadsheet, this does not mean that they do not have an authority record or work identifiers, simply that they were not included in one of the reference works used to generate this list of authors and editions. The author may be found in either the TLG, PHI or some other canon depending on the nature of the work being cataloged. The relevant canon (depending on the language of the author) should be searched to determine the existence of work identifiers. In addition, the presence of an author in one of the work canons does not guarantee the existence of an authority record. In some cases, authors have had authority records in the VIAF without work identifiers in a standard canon and the reverse has been true many times as well.
If an author’s name cannot be found in either the VIAF or the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) linked data service, then it is assumed that there is not a publicly available authority record for this author and one must be created.
For authors with records in the LCNAF, MADS records can simply be downloaded from the permanent authority record page. For example, the authority record for Herodotus below includes a list of “Alternate Formats” at the bottom that can be downloaded, one of which is a MADS record.
While the use of VIAF is preferable in that there are more name variants and information in the record due to the aggregation of multiple authority files, only MARCXML records are available for download. The authority record page for Herodotus below has an expandable tab at the bottom labeled “Record Views.”
Clicking on the MARC-21 record link takes the user to a MARCXML version of the authority record that can then be downloaded. These files can then be converted to MADS using the LC’s XSLT Stylesheet.
All new MADS files are then saved alphabetically under an individual author name folder created in the mads directory in catalog_pending.
For the next steps on enhancing the MADS record that you have downloaded, go here.