Currently, when authority linking in Alma is based on ID rather than text, Alma does not check whether the authority heading type in the bibliographic record matches the heading type in the authority record. For example, Alma will link a 600 tag in the bib record for personal names with an authority record whose heading is in tag 110 for corporate names if their ID matches, even though Alma would not offer that option if F3 were pressed.

We would like Alma to (1) avoid linking in such cases and (2) flag these instances in the authority control task list.

We ran into this issue in the context of a migration from a non-MARC21 system, from where we still receive authority records that are mapped to MARC21. Initially, a certain sort of authority record was converted into personal name authority records (X00), which was changed later into corporate name authority records (X10). Consequently, we had to clean up instances where the authority heading type in the bib records does not match the heading type of the authority record.

We had hoped to use the authority control task list to identify those instances where linking would fail due to a mismatch of authority types. However, according to Ex Libris, case 07775618, checking the authority heading type is only available for institutions using text-based authority linking.

Ex Libris wrote: "The product manager thoroughly reviewed this case as a part of the issue handling and advised the designed behavior. The linking of direct ID authority is not dependent on specific heading types but is instead based on matching the 035 value of the authority with the $0 subfield of the bibliographic field. This means that direct ID authority linking does not involve additional checks for heading types. For example, it will correctly link a 650 field in the bibliography with a 110 field in the authority, as only the match in subfield $0 is considered. Similarly, any changes to the field tag in the linked authority record would not affect the field tag in the linked bibliographic record."

We believe that adding checks on the authority heading type will benefit also other libraries that use ID-based authority linking.