What are authority terms?

• Authority terms, or authority records, are used by librarians and archivists to insure that the forms of a name, subject or title appear consistently within a catalog or index. When creating catalog or index entries, librarians and archivists check names, subjects, and sometimes titles, in the "authority file" as part of their cataloging methodology.
• Customarily authority terms, or authority records, are not visible in the public versions of library and archive catalogs, but work "behind the scenes."
• The Dance Heritage Coalition Access Project coordinated the loading of thousands of authority records for choreographers, dancers, and choreographic works into the Library of Congress' Name Authority File, accessible to library and achive professionals using RLIN and OCLC. The qualifier (Choreographic work) following a dance's title, proposed by the Dance Heritage Coalition and approved by the Library of Congress, distinguishes choreographies from other artistic and literary works.
• The Dance Heritage Coalition member institutions continue to contribute at least fifty new authority terms for names and choreographic works to the Library of Congress Name Authority File each month.
• The annual CD-ROM version of the New York Public Library Dance Collection online catalog, Dance on Disc, contains authority terms as a service to the dance research community. Information found within the authority records includes performance details for choreographic works, birth and death dates (if known) of choreographers and dancers, and descriptive information for some dance forms and dance organizations.