LCSH Changes: Lighting Strikes Twice

I'm giddy with happiness. Somebody pinch me.

At the request of an AUTOCAT subscriber (go AUTOCAT!), the authority record for the PATRIOT Act (i.e. the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001) now has an eminently sensible cross-reference from " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Everyone squeal with me. “Yipeee!”

I just overlaid the new authority record in GPC and GGC and you've got to see it in action. Go to the OPAC and do an exact subject search for "patriot act". Now click on the grey "See Also" oval next to " PATRIOT Act (U.S.)". Now click on that crazy long PATRIOT Act heading and voila, our books on the PATRIOT Act!

Of course, none of the cross-references were capitalized (“PATRIOT” is an acronym), but that’s a pretty common mistake with this act, and we can’t have everything. I couldn’t find a rule expressly forbidding capitalization in this instance, so I just went ahead and did it myself. Future updates through MARCIVE may overlay my changes and revert to the lack of capitalization, but the lovely lovely cross-reference will remain.

I also skimmed the database to make sure that this subject heading is applied to everything that it could be. I’m not usually a big advocate of the keyword search, but this is actually a very good candidate for it. A keyword search for “PATRIOT Act” as a phrase will pull up a several titles that have an essay or two on the act, but not enough information to merit the subject heading itself.

Ahhh, I love it when an authority record comes together.