Similarities and Differences between Wikipedia Lists and MARC Cataloging
The initial barriers for participating in the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) versus Wikipedia differ considerably. The PCC requires institutional participants to undergo training through the PCC Secretariat before creating or editing Name Authority Records (NARs). However, creating Wikipedia lists only requires familiarity with word processing software, so most people will be able to use the visual editor to create and make edits to Wikipedia lists and pages with minimal or no additional training, although several tutorials and guides are provided for users. In the analysis of Wikipedia lists, the subject expert was quickly able to learn how to add the Authority Template and the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) to Wikipedia pages where it was lacking and did so with accuracy and efficiency; however, no attempt was made to train them on the creation of NARs or the editing of existing NARs because of the greater amount of time required to learn Resource Description and Access (RDA) standards, International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) punctuation, and other cataloging skills.
The process for making changes to PCC cataloging policy and Wikipedia policy also differs significantly. Partway through the creation of NARs in the project, PCC announced a moratorium on the use of the MARC 024 Other Standard Identifier field (Frank, 2018). In November 2020, PCC ended the moratorium and provided guidelines on the use of the MARC 024 field to link NARs to Wikidata identifiers, two years after the project. This allows NARs to link directly to Wikidata items, which are also used by the Authority Control Template in Wikipedia articles to provide links to NARs and other identifiers such as the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) and Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) (Wikipedia contributors, 2020b). No impactful changes to Wikipedia policy were encountered during the project, but it is understood that proposals can be made and implemented relatively swiftly if approved by the community. This is not intended as a critique of the PCC deliberative process but may be seen
