NACO Participants' Manual -3rd Edition - Library of Congress

IntroductionThe Name Authority Cooperative Project (NACO) was established in 1977 as a result of anagreement between the Library of Congress (LC) and the U.S. Government Printing Office(GPO) to use and maintain a common authority file. With the success of this initial project,LC entered into additional cooperative cataloging projects with many other institutions. Thepartners in cooperative cataloging efforts eventually developed the Program for CooperativeCataloging (PCC) to administer these projects, including the Subject Authority CooperativeProgram (SACO), the Bibliographic Cooperative Program (BIBCO), and the CooperativeOnline Serials Program (CONSER).One of the missions of the LC Regional and Cooperative Cataloging Division (RCCD) is tosupport bibliographic cooperation among cataloging institutions. The Cooperative CatalogingTeam assists the division by carrying out the team’s mission “to develop cooperativecataloging programs among the Library of Congress and libraries and related institutions inthe national and international library communities; to provide direct service and clerical andtechnical support to those cooperative partners; and to coordinate cooperative catalogingactivities of the Library of Congress.”Currently, over 400 institutions throughout the world representing national, state, university,public, and special libraries, and vendors participate in one or more of these cooperativecataloging projects. NACO participants have contributed over 2.7 million name and seriesauthority records alone since the inception of the program to the Library of Congress/NACOAuthority File (LC/NAF). Both BIBCO and CONSER participants are also NACO members byvirtue of the fact BIBCO and CONSER bibliographic records are subject to authority control.The NACO Participants’ Manual addresses NACO procedures for name authority recordsonly and is to be used in conjunction with the appropriate authoritative documentation that isrelevant to each section of the manual, including relevant documentation from thebibliographic utilities, OCLC and RLG. The manual has been extensively revised andupdated to reflect current practice. Examples used in the manual are not prescriptive ofpractice. Examples of past practice can still be found in MARC21 Format for Authority Data,in the event that a cataloger needs to refer to such examples.July 31, 20054