The authority format of subject headings. The Thesaurus of the National Library and the MARC231
subject authority format
Ungváry Rudolf <>
Országos Széchényi Könyvtár
The international and
national standards of subject heading lists and thesauri, and the authority
format has developed independently. Standards were prepared in the 80-s, much
earlier than the current MARC21 authority format. There isn?t complete comformity between the record
structures described in the two standard documents. The data structure of the authority
record is significantly more differentiated in the
MARC21 format than in the standards of thesauri.
On one hand, they make possible the use of more relationships,
and even offer tricky solutions for handling them. Especially remarkable is the
possibility of complex subject references: it means that the
relations between lexical units can be given in textual forms as well. This option is completely missing from the standards
of thesauri.
On the other hand, they allow
the use of more note fields. It is possible with the help of them
to get exact information about the history of the topic, about the changes,
methods of usage, sources, deletion of the lexical unit, etc.
Thirdly, they regulate more accurately the structure of multilingual relations. Based on the authority format, it is possible to handle the relations of the subject headings and notations of UDC.
In term of thesauri, the MARC21 authority formats are completely aquivalent. The Thesaurus of the National Library, together with the Geothesaurus of the National Library contains 106.493 lexical units and 55.761 notations of UDC. Its structure is in harmony with the authority format of MARC21 and HUNMARC as well.