Forming the Oklahoma

Abstract

How do you know if the books by Robert Smith, Bob Smith, or Bobby Smith are the same author or not? Are you stuck in helping your patrons find a resource by the same John Doe? Catalogers are here to help you through the international Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) steered by the Library of Congress by establishing authorized names to be used in library catalogs far and wide. In 2017, a small group of Oklahoma academic and public librarians came together to form the Oklahoma "Tornado" Funnel where catalogers trained with Jay Shorten of the University of Oklahoma Libraries to learn how to establish and disambiguate names, including names for people and entities in Oklahoma. Our poster will de-mystify the process of starting and joining a NACO funnel as well as showing how catalogers at the University of Central Oklahoma incorporated this new skill into their workflow to improve the quality of catalogs everywhere.