National libraries and institutions managing controlled vocabularies require robust tools to ensure the integrity of their authority files. Current Alma functionality (Authority Control Task List) focuses primarily on the link between bibliographic and authority records. We propose a new set of dedicated Authority Management Reports to identify internal inconsistencies, errors, and redundancies within the authority files themselves.

Proposed Reports & Functionality

· Orphan Authority Records: Identifies authority records without any associated bibliographic records. Crucial for cleaning up legacy data or unused headings.

· MARC Encoding Errors: Detects structural errors within authority records (e.g., missing mandatory fields like 008, invalid indicators, or incorrect subfield usage).

· Duplicate Authority Records: Identifies records with identical authorized headings (1XX) to facilitate merging and maintain the "unique entry" principle.

· Close Matches / Fuzzy Logic: A report showing records with high similarity in the 1XX field (e.g., minor punctuation or spelling differences) to catch potential duplicates.

Justification for Development

· Data Quality: For National Bibliographic Agencies, the authority file is a product in itself. These reports are essential to ensure the data shared with other libraries is accurate.

· Workflow Efficiency: Currently, staff must create complex Analytics reports or use external tools to find these errors. Integrating this into the Authority Control Task List would streamline daily maintenance.

· Database Health: Removing orphans and merging duplicates reduces system noise and improves search precision for both catalogers and end-users.