Christine, Years ago, when we did our retrospective conversion, we purchased the authority files. Since then I have downloaded any needed as I catalog. They are freely available at http://authorities.loc.gov/ I have also submitted additional cross references, new headings, and new LC classification numbers through the SACO program. There is no formal training, just follow the guidelines and you too can enhance the LCSHs. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/pcc/saco/ Until such time as our catalogs validate headings against the LC site on-the-fly and then send patron search requests to the LC site and match their term against the files and then submit that for searching against our catalogs I can't see authority files going away. Even then not. Because there can be local enhancements. Here in Texas a group of school librarians are adding the state education standards to the LC authority records so that teachers can search on the standard and pull up materials for their class. A big job, but when divided across many librarians across Texas not quite so daunting. The trend seems to be quite the reverse. Everybody on the Web is getting into the thesaurus, ontology game. There are more controlled vocabularies now than ever. Sincerely, David Bigwood bigwood@lpi.usra.edu Lunar & Planetary Institute http://www.lpi.usra.edu/library/whats_new.shtml Catalogablog http://catalogablog.blogspot.com -----Original Message----- From: koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz [mailto:koha-bounces@lists.katipo.co.nz] On Behalf Of Christine Forte Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 10:37 AM To: koha@lists.katipo.co.nz Subject: [Koha] authority files -- does anyone have them? dear friends, i'd be interested in hearing from anyone who has downloaded, created, or purchased authority files for their catalog. (is everyone getting by just fine w/o them?) i like to see the authority lists for subjects, because i find it can help or inspire my searches, but maybe the trend is that authority files are slowly becoming obsolete. best regards, christine _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha