I'm having trouble understanding how Authorities (mainly author) is supposed to work. I'm sure part of it is me not understanding the work flow, but equally it looks as though something is not functioning. Koha version is 3.02.11.000 My understanding is that when cataloguing a book I should check whether the author is already in the catalogue and whether the current form of name is the same as that already existing, preferable to that existing, or that the existing form should be used. When I create a new record (or import one) I click on Tag Editor for field 100$a, and a search screen comes up. I enter an author surname (for an author already in the catalogue, or for one already in the authorities and click search. Whether I search default or personal name, I get a no records found message. If I go into Home/Cataloguing/Authorities and search either author or default, and any combination of the other fields I get no results found, if I choose Personal Name and leave everything else blank I get an error 500. If I leave everything here blank and click on submit I get a list of every Authority in the system, running to 67 pages to search through! If I click submit on the blank search box that comes up in response to clicking on Tag Editor for field 100$a, I get an error 500 message. BiblioAddsAuthorities is set to allow, and authors that I have entered myself or imported appear in the list of authorities. However the main part of the catalogue was imported in bulk. I should like to import some (or all) of the authors there into authorities, but I can see no way to do it from within Authorities, a Marc screen come up that requires keyboard input and does not allow tag editing. Where I have imported records with variant names I would like to combine the biblios under one name, and delete the other. I can't see any way to validate biblios into an author authority. I've looked at the manual, which shows me plenty of screen shots and definitions, but doesn't tell me how to use it, so either the system, or my intuition (or both) are at fault. Any help gratefully received... David Allen -- David Allen London