Is the Current Way of Constructing Corporate Authority Records Still Useful?

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to know whether the current way of constructing corporate authority records still helps users find resources by and about corporate bodies in the online public access catalog (OPAC) in the Web-oriented environment. In Nov 2003, the author extracted AACR2 corporate headings created between 1998 and 2002, excluding conference names and geographic names, from Library of Congress Name Authority File (LC NAF) through the tape load of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Voyager system. After those corporate headings were extracted, a minimum random sample size of 385 corporate headings was required to get a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval ±5% for this study. The study finds users have a one-in-five chance of not finding the resources by and about corporate bodies in the OPAC if they use the form of corporate names on the Web.