MARC authority records provide the standardized forms of names for people, corporate bodies, meetings, titles, and subjects. In doing this, authority records provide authority control. Authority control means establishing a recognized form for an entity’s name and using that form whenever the name is needed as an access point in a bibliographic record.
For example, if you searched in your library’s online catalog for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, you might retrieve a record that looked like this:
TITLE:
|
The adventures of Tom Sawyer / Mark Twain ; with an introduction by Robert S. Tilton. |
| AUTHOR: |
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. |
| PUBLISHED: |
New York : Signet Classic, 1997. |
| MATERIAL: |
xxi, 216 p. ; 18 cm. |
| NOTE: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-216). |
| SUBJECTS: |
Sawyer, Tom (Fictitious character) – Fiction.
Boys – Missouri – Fiction.
Mississippi River – Fiction.
Missouri – Fiction.
Adventure stories. |
