This research analyzes the current status of personal name authority control and its impact on the end user searching against OPACs in public libraries in Korea. Further, it also suggests the ways to improve the recall ratio in author search with a minimal modification, system-wise and authority-wise, on the KOLISNET as a stepping stone for other public libraries. Finally, a long-term plan for establishing proper authority work in public libraries including the National Library of Korea is briefly proposed. In order to find out whether authority works are conducted and examine how variant written forms of the same foreign name and variant names of the same person are treated, OPACS of the National Library of Korea, KOLISNET, and ten randomly selected public libraries were searched. Findings indicate that while the National Library of Korea was performing authority control, even incomplete, the rest did not appear to conduct any form of authority control. As a spinoff of the research, it is observed that in many public libraries their bibliographic records and retrieval methods are inaccurate, lacking consistency, and incomplete. In sum, it is strongly recommended that (1) as a start for authority work among public libraries personal name authority control should be conducted to enhance the identifying and collocating functions in OPACs, (2) a shared authority database, for which the National Library of Korea's authority database might be used, should be built for public libraries.