How do duplicate authorities occur?
There are several ways these duplicates can be created.
- Editing an existing authority to have the same value as an existing authority
- All fields in the authority are not the same as the original authority and a new one was created.
- There may be some other procedure during a group edit or other action that might have produced a duplicate
How do I clean these up if I choose to?
- First identify which duplicate has less references by clicking on "Show records using this authority".
- Select all the records that are returned and add them to a new label. This will allow you to find them in the next step.
- Go back to the authority you identified in step one and delete that authority.
- Exit the authority and open the label you created in step two. Select all the items in that label and do a group edit. Add the authority value back to the records and save.