  We consider linear cyclic codes with the locality property, or locally
recoverable codes (LRC codes). A family of LRC codes that generalize the
classical construction of Reed-Solomon codes was constructed in a recent paper
by I. Tamo and A. Barg (IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, no. 8, 2014). In this paper
we focus on optimal cyclic codes that arise from this construction. We give a
characterization of these codes in terms of their zeros, and observe that there
are many equivalent ways of constructing optimal cyclic LRC codes over a given
field. We also study subfield subcodes of cyclic LRC codes (BCH-like LRC codes)
and establish several results about their locality and minimum distance. The
locality parameter of a cyclic code is related to the dual distance of this
code, and we phrase our results in terms of upper bounds on the dual distance.
