MU Libraries Become Independent NACO Members

The MU Libraries Catalog Department received great news at the end of December.  The MU Libraries first became NACO participants in January 2008.  Now, after a long process of training and review, we have achieved the next milestone, “independent” status as NACO members.  NACO, the Name Authority Cooperative Program, is one of four activities of the Library of Congress’ Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC).  NACO members create and maintain authority records that indicate the proper form for personal and corporate names and uniform titles.  Last fiscal year we contributed more than 500 records to the WorldCat and Library of Congress authority files and this year we are on track to contribute even more.  We establish forms of names and create authority records for entities in the United States and elsewhere.  We create many authority records for MU faculty advisors, Missouri geographic regions, and university departments.

Our “independent” status means that our reviewer has evaluated and determined that our skills and leadership meet the PCC standards and guidelines necessary to cooperatively maintain the integrity of the WorldCat and Library of Congress name authority files.

Our NACO Coordinator, Mary Aycock, shepherded us through the process setting up our initial training, providing additional training, reviewing our authority records, and serving as liaison to our NACO trainer, Mary Charles Lasater of Vanderbilt University.