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.)
Hi Patrick! It’s great to see you blogging about Topic Maps!
I agree with you that there is something similar about authority records and PSIs.
I have some links related to the subject of authority and identifiers that may interest you…
Jonathan Rockhind wrote a post about the purpose of authority control and identifiers a couple years ago:
http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2007/08/08/the-purpose-of-authority-control/
LoC has put up LCSH as linked data:
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/
(I don’t know if there are any plans to release the Name Authorities as Linked Data)
I also notice you’re getting up to speed on LIS lingo, if you haven’t already seen ODLIS you may find it useful:
http://lu.com/odlis/index.cfm
Comment by Marijane White — March 17, 2010 @ 7:40 pm
Better yet … we should encourage other librarians to expose their authority records on the web with persistent URIs, as WorldCat does:
http://www.worldcat.org/devnet/wiki/Identities#Direct_Linking
Comment by Con — March 17, 2010 @ 10:40 pm
Thanks for the links Marijane.
Particularly ODLIS! Reminds me of my first copy of Black’s Law Dictionary. 😉 While that sounds like a dull read and parts do drag, it isn’t without interesting parts. Particularly if you remember that the legal process fixes rules in such a way as to put them beyond discussion.
+1! to Con’s suggestion that authority records be exposed on the web with persistent URIs.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — March 18, 2010 @ 8:20 pm