Mariah J. Tolson is an East St. Louis, Ill. native who began writing books during the pandemic for her son. Her first book, Little Hands, tells of how a child grows so fast, apparent by the growth of their hands, and expresses the relationship between a mother and child. Tolson's second book, Your Colors, explores yoga poses and the colors of the chakras while uplifting self-esteem through affirmations. In the afterword, Tolson expresses her hope that parents will engage with this book by teaching children the yoga poses, illustrated in the book by Marissa Nelson.

Both books were brought to the Cataloging Maintenance Center by Mississippi Valley Library District in Collinsville, Ill. The Cataloging Maintenance Center then utilized OCLC Connexion, OCLC Bibliographic Formats and Standards, and information from the author to catalog these books.

Next, the Cataloging Maintenance Center created a personal name authority record for the author. This allows the author to be attached to the bibliographic records that have been created for her books. To create these records, a personal name record was created in OCLC Connexion, submitted for review to the Library of Congress, and peer-reviewed within the Cataloging Maintenance Center, during which suggestions and edits were made. Then Tolson’s name was added to the NACO authority file.

The Cataloging Maintenance Center catalogs local authors for a variety of materials, including children’s books. If you have a book by a local author to be cataloged, please contact our Cataloging Maintenance Center staff at cmc@illinoisheartland.org for more information about our free cataloging services.