Searching OCLC's Authorities File

Scope

• The Authorities File supports three kinds of searching:
  • Phrase searching using "sca"
  • Derived key searching using "fin"
  • Numeric searching using "fin"

Phrase searching

• Format
  • sca <index> <phrase>
• Indexes supported include:

  Index	Label	Example
  Personal name	pn	sca pn king, stephen
  Corporate name	co	sca co apple computer
  Conference name	cn	sca cn american cancer association
  Title	ti	sca ti old man and the sea
  Subject	su	sca su fiber optics

• Notes:
  • There are NO stopwords.
  • Phrases are limited to:
    • Root Index - 128 characters
    • Expanded Index - 58 characters.
  • Eliminate apostrophes and eliminate the space it occupied.
    • Example: teacher's becomes teachers
  • Eliminate standalone ampersands ( & ) and ones at the beginning or end of words and the space they occupy.
    • Example: Days & Nights becomes days nights
  • AF Subject searching:
    • A result will be a record or records in which the MARC 150 filed will contain the standard or established subject or topical term used in main or extended subject headings.

Derived key searching

• You can do Derived Key searching, but problems with stop words and search configuration make Phrase Searching the more attractive method.
• Formats
  • fin <index> <derived search key>
  • [<derived search key>
• Indexes supported include:

  Index	Label	Format	Example
  Name (personal, corporate, geographic)	dn	4,3,1	fin dn unio,of,s [unio,of,s for: Union of South Africa
  Uniform Title	dt	3,2,2,1	fin dt lon,da,jo,i [lon,da,jo,i for: Long Day's Journey into Night
  Subject	ds	5,3	fin ds world,wid [world,wid for: World Wide Web

• Stop words

  a	A.	American	an
  association	Australia	bureau	Canada
  colloquium	commission	committee	conference
  congress	council	department	dept.
  east	for	France	Great Britain
  house	India	institute	institution
  international	joint	national	north
  of	on	seminar	senate
  society	south	state	subcommittee
  symposium	the	U.N.	U. N.
  United Nations	United States	university	U.S.
  U. S.	west

  • Also the names of all of the states of the U.S.

Numeric searching

• Formats
  • fin <index> <number>
  • [<number>
• Indexes supported include:

  Index	Label	Format	Example
  OCLC Authority Record number (ARN)	an	fin an [# [*	fin an 1984885 [#1984885 [*1984885
  Library of Congress Authority Record Control Number (LCCN)	ln	fin ln [	fin ln 39042959 [39042959
  International Standard Book Number (ISBN)	bn	fin bn [	fin bn 0201353857 [0201353857 for: World Wide Web
  International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)	sn	fin sn [nnnn-nnnn	fin sn 10896651 [1089-6651

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