This valuable new book reviews past research on authority control, offers new findings, and documents important considerations for automating authority control. Covering a wide range of important topics, the contributors explore sharing authority records nationally and internationally, perspectives on recent research and theoretical studies, results of some new research with suggestions for future research, and descriptions of the design of three different computerized authority control systems along with the impact of two such systems on library operations.

Authority Control in the Online Environment fills a vital gap in the literature by emphasizing name and title authority control instead of subject authority control, which has already received considerable attention in recent literature. This practical volume provides a great deal of inspiration to library administrators, computer systems staff, catalogers, and other librarians involved with the automation of bibliographic control. Library school students and professors desiring background information on authority control will also find this book enlightening.