What Authority? Why Control?

This paper compares the difference between approaches to defining database quality in cataloging and in online databases. Authority control is a solution created by catalogers to ensure that access points are both collocated and differentiated in a library catalog. This time consuming and costly method of quality control is used by catalogers based on the principle that the quality of individual cataloging records determines the success rate for user searching the library catalog. The principle is not shared by creators of online databases, who universally prefer speed to uniformity and standardization of access points. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: ©2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]