The Organization of Information

Chapter 8  Metadata:  Access and Authority Control

At one time or another, almost everyone has had difficulty finding a book, an article or other source of information on an online catalog.  After typing in numerous words or phrases, including their synonyms or a rearranged version of the same words, one can still be left without any resources. There are countless ways people try to search for what they want because no two people think exactly alike. That is why there is a great need for authority control.


Authority control is the result of the process of maintaining consistency of access points, words or phrases used to obtain information from an organized system.  Among other things, this will enable users to identitfy the creator of a particular work using their own vocabulary, to collocate (bring together related information resources) and to decide if the information provided from the search is what they are looking for. Take note the following real-life situation. Look for what happens when different versions of the authors' names were entered and how resources were collocated.

As part of our schoolwide reading program, students are encouraged to read fairy tales and folklore throughout the month of December. (Last month's genre was Historical Fiction/Non Fiction.)  From Pre-K to 6th grade, everyone seems to love Princess Furball, a fairy tale based on the Brothers Grimm's Thousandfurs. When I searched the Library of Congress database for the published works by the siblings, I found several hundred pages when I used "Grimm Brothers" and the "Brothers Grimm". "Grimm" alone retrieved over 3500 pages of records, the first several ones written in German. Princess Furball was listed three times, once as a video and twice as a book. Thousandfurs was mentioned in a book titled Rare Treasures from Grimm.