Relationships in Authority and Bibliographic Data: What Is Recorded and How Much?

This study investigates how relationships between entities are recorded in Library of Congress Name Authority File records and in the bibliographic records of six U.S. university libraries. Quantitative analysis shows that discretionary relationships and relationship designators are not recorded frequently in authority records. In the bibliographic datasets, nearly all analyzed records contain relationships, but relationships among Resources (work and expression) are recorded infrequently. RDA records use more relationship designators than non-RDA records, and libraries vary in how they use relationship designators. Whether libraries become contributors to relationship recording will determine the value of their metadata in a linked data environment.