Las Vegas City Wire

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas membership with the Library of Congress will ensure consistency with regards to collections in the school library and those worldwide, according to a recent university press release.

The Library of Congress' Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) will allow school libraries to join as an institutionally autonomous contributor, the release stated.

“This is a tremendous achievement for UNLV and representative of our libraries commitment to diversifying the historical record and ensuring the inclusion of many great Nevadans who have shaped our region,” Maggie Farrell, dean of UNLV Libraries, said in the release. “I commend our libraries faculty for initiating this process, which included many hours of training, and achieving this status so quickly."

The university becomes the second library system in Nevada to join NACO, according to the release. Member institutions can create and update the Library of Congress Name Authority File.

“Name Authority Records provide unique and uniform access points – for example, a standardized form of a person's name – in library catalogs,” said Stephanie Fell, specialized collections catalog librarian and one of the leaders on UNLV’s efforts to join NACO. “These records are then available for use by libraries worldwide. They make sure names are consistently identified within a library's collections and across different library collections, facilitating discovery of library materials, particularly our unique local collections.”

The partnership will also allow for consistent discovery of library collections that consist of people's names, company names, or locations, the release stated.