Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

March 6, 2013

VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

Filed under: Authority Record,Library,Library Associations,Merging,Subject Identity — Patrick Durusau @ 11:19 am

VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

From the webpage:

VIAF, implemented and hosted by OCLC, is a joint project of several national libraries plus selected regional and trans-national library agencies. The project’s goal is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking widely-used authority files and making that information available on the Web.

The “about” link at the bottom of the page is broken (in the English version). A working “about” link for VIAF reports:

At a glance

  • A collaborative effort between national libraries and organizations contributing name authority files, furthering access to information
  • All authority data for a given entity is linked together into a “super” authority record
  • A convenient way for the library community and other agencies to repurpose bibliographic data produced by libraries serving different language communities

The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is an international service designed to provide convenient access to the world’s major name authority files. Its creators envision the VIAF as a building block for the Semantic Web to enable switching of the displayed form of names for persons to the preferred language and script of the Web user. VIAF began as a joint project with the Library of Congress (LC), the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) and OCLC. It has, over the past decade, become a cooperative effort involving an expanding number of other national libraries and other agencies. At the beginning of 2012, contributors include 20 agencies from 16 countries.

Most large libraries maintain lists of names for people, corporations, conferences, and geographic places, as well as lists to control works and other entities. These lists, or authority files, have been developed and maintained in distinctive ways by individual library communities around the world. The differences in how to approach this work become evident as library data from many communities is combined in shared catalogs such as OCLC’s WorldCat.

VIAF helps to make library authority files less expensive to maintain and more generally useful to the library domain and beyond. To achieve this, VIAF matches and links the authority files of national libraries and groups all authority records for a given entity into a merged “super” authority record that brings together the different names for that entity. By linking disparate names for the same person or organization, VIAF provides a convenient means for a wider community of libraries and other agencies to repurpose bibliographic data produced by libraries serving different language communities.

If you were to substitute for ‘”super” authority record,” the term topic, you would be part of the way towards a topic map.

Topics gather information about a given entity into a single location.

Topics differ from the authority records you find at VIAF in two very important ways:

  1. First, topics, unlike authority records, have the ability to merge with other topics, creating new topics that have more information than any of the original topics.
  2. Second, authority records are created by, well, authorities. Do you see your name or the name of your organization on the list at VIAF? Topics can be created by anyone and merged with other topics on terms chosen by the possessor of the topic map. You don’t have to wait for an authority to create the topic or approve your merging of it.

There are definite advantages to having authorities and authority records, but there are also advantages to having the freedom to describe your world, in your terms.

January 11, 2013

EU – Law-Related Authority Files

Filed under: Authority Record,EU,Vocabularies — Patrick Durusau @ 7:37 pm

The EU Data Portal has a number of law-related authority files:

I first saw these at: New EU Data Portal links to several law-related authority files.

October 18, 2010

Vassallo, FRAD – ISAAR(CPF) – EAC-CPF – Topic Maps Mapping – Post

Filed under: Authority Record,Topic Maps — Patrick Durusau @ 8:59 am

Vassallo, FRAD – ISAAR(CPF) – EAC-CPF – Topic Maps Mapping

Description:

A corollary subject of my phd thesis was the analysis of parallelisms between libriarian and archival world.

One of the points of contact is in the description of agents and in the costitution of authority files.

For those aims, a mapping between FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data) and ISAAR(CPF) (International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, persons and families) could be useful.

Sample mappings are available for download.

A nice intersection of library and topic map issues.

September 17, 2010

Planet Cataloging

Filed under: Access Points,Authority Record,Cataloging,Classification — Patrick Durusau @ 5:01 am

Planet Cataloging

Aggregation of > 60 blogs on cataloging.

Read to improve your topic mapping (and cataloging) skills.

March 17, 2010

Authority Record (Another Way To Say PSI?)

Filed under: Authority Record,PSI — Patrick Durusau @ 7:10 pm

I think the Library of Congress has the best definition I have found for an “authority record“:

An authority record is a tool used by librarians to establish forms of names (for persons, places, meetings, and organizations), titles, and subjects used on bibliographic records. Authority records enable librarians to provide uniform access to materials in library catalogs and to provide clear identification of authors and subject headings. For example, works about “movies,” “motion pictures,” “cinema,” and “films” are all entered under the established subject heading “Motion pictures.”

Note that authority records help:

  • …provide uniform access to materials…
  • …provide clear identification…

If rather than “access” you said provide a basis for merging two topics together, I would swear you were talking about a PSI.

If you added that it provides a “clear identification” of a subject, then I would know you were talking about a PSI.

Well, except that PSI are supposed to be resolveable URIs, etc.

Seems to me that we need to re-think the decision to privilege URIs as identifiers for subjects. Libraries around the world, to say nothing of professional organizations, have been creating authority records that act much as PSIs do for many subjects.

Do we really want to re-invent all of those authority records? (Not to mention all the mileage and good will we would gain from using existing sets of authority records.)

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