In order for the online catalog to be used to retrieve all items by a given author or on a given subject, the access points must be normalized and standardized. The relationships between the heading and other authoritative headings.
Authority work is documented in an authority record and stored in an authority file.
Authority files represent records of decisions make about the manner in which cataloging rules have been interpreted. Authority headings are defined by organizations that provide officially approved terms for headings that may be used in bibliographic records. In the United States the Library of Congress serves as the organization that provides name and subject authorized headings. An author s name, or a subject is established when used for the first time, and the decision is recorded in a record called the authority record. Some authority records are created for unapproved or unestablished terms.