VIAF & ISNI
Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)
&
International Standard Name
Identifier (ISNI)
by Titia van der Werf
Tutorial
Wednesday, 8 May, 2013
COAR 4th Annual Meeting, Istanbul
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Persistent identifiers: basics
Identifier properties:
• Unique
=> dependency = system/namespace
• Persistent => dependency = organisational
commitment
Best practice: identifiers should be independent of
location/addresses:
• In the library: call number & shelf number
• On the web: URN & URL
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Authority control
And many more names…
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Collective authors
Pseudonyms
Imaginary characters
Deities, saints, angels
Whales, horses, dinosaurs
Buildings
Ships, telescopes, space ships, missiles
Kings, Popes, Presidents
Cities, lakes, mountains
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Authority record = name identifier
For each name, the cataloguer assigns a unique
term (header) which is used consistently,
uniquely, and unambiguously within the library
catalogue to describe all references to that same
name
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Example of an authority record in MARC
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National Authority File Programs
Participating institutions contribute authority
records according to a common set of standards
and guidelines.
• USA: NACO operated by LC
• NL: NTA operated by OCLC
• DE: Personennamendatei, PND (incl. in the
Gemeinsame Normdatei) – operated by the DNB
• FR: Authority Data for Persons – operated by BnF and
idRef operated by ABES
• etc.
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Issues when aggregating different
authority files in one system
In WorldCat:
• duplication of authority control
• differences in national/regional authority control
practices
=> No unique and unambiguous referencing
=> Need to link up the different authority files
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VIAF
What is VIAF?
• Merge of 24+ national level authority files
• Cooperative program run by OCLC
with the VIAF Council
• 29 million authority records
• 112 million bibliographic records
• Migrated from an OCLC Research project
to an OCLC service in 2012
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VIAF
Authorities in a connected world
Beyond the catalogue
Towards web-accessible identification of names
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From control in library systems to
a trusted source in a world of linked data
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http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/diagrams/lod/2010-color.png
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WorldCat Identities
A web page for every name
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ISNI
Founded in 2010 by:
• International Confederation of Societies of Authors and
Composers (CISAC),
• The International Federation of Reproduction Rights
Organisations (IFRRO),
• International Performers Database Association (IPDA),
• ProQuest,
• OCLC,
• The Conference of European National Librarians.
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ISNI
• Administred and governed by: ISNI International
Agency
• Operated by: OCLC (official assignment agency)
Approach:
1.Creating the initial ISNI database
2.Establishing a system of registration agencies
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Populating the ISNI database
• Allocation of ISNIs to the vast legacy of identities
already managed in separate data silos in
different domains of activity throughout the
information industry
• Base file for ISNI = VIAF (public domain/library
data)
• Proprietary databases of ISNI-IA members
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Populating the ISNI database
ISNI stats March 2013
• Total nr of records: 16.4M
• Assigned records: 6.4M
• Next file to be loaded: ZETOC with 97M bibl.
Records
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ORCID – VIAF - ISNI
• ORCID is an instance of ISNI: targeted to
reseachers (ISNI also supports other types of
creators)
• The base source for ISNI is VIAF
• VIAF is an effort on the background to clean-up
and link-up all authority files of names maintained
by libraries and to make this data available for reuse – eg. for researcher identification.
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Syndication / discovery
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Syndication/discovery
• CRIS/IR and authority control perspectives are
researcher/university and library perspectives not end-user perspectives
• How will users find researchers in the places
where they search for persons: in Google and
social media networks?
• How can researcher-ids contribute to discovery
on those environments?
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Syndication/discovery
• Make sure upstream data sources are correct:
VIAF feeds into FreeBase and Wikipedia.
• Open up the data sources: data sources are
mostly closed
• Support semantic markup schemes used by
Google, Facebook, etc. (schema.org; the open
graph protocol...)
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Titia van der Werf
titia.vanderwerf@oclc.org
Questions?
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