Authority control

Authority control in the context of the Guide pertains to entities with proper names, i.e., people/corporate bodies, subjects/built works, and geographic locations. One of the major functions of authority control is to govern the form and content of proper names in order to ensure that all references to a given person or subject are collocated. An authority record may contain not only the preferred name, but all other names for the person or subject. An expanded authority record can also include contextual information, e.g., biographical or corporate histories.