Western Name Authority File: A Pilot Regional Name Authority Project

journal articleThe prospect of authority control in digital libraries creates unique challenges. Digital library systems and software often do not support integrated authority control, which can create issues in consistency for personal and corporate names representation in descriptive metadata. Standard practice for library metadata is to use existing controlled vocabularies such as the Library of Congress Name Authority File, but what can be done if the personal names and corporate bodies in local or regional digital collections are not represented in the Library of Congress? As digital collection managers look towards providing metadata for regional and statewide shared repository systems and national digital collection aggregators like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), issues in digital collection authority control are magnified. This article explores the process in creating a shared regional authority file of personal names and corporate bodies existing in digital collection metadata records in several institutions throughout the Western United States. Steps in the process included reviewing data models, metadata collection, metadata deduplication and wrangling, vocabulary reconciliation, and data enhancement. Details on the process in making the Western Name Authority File accessible to the public and assessing project outcomes are included

Name Authority Control in Institutional Repositories and Its Relationships to Metadata Quality

This study describes a questionnaire that was distributed to managers and staff of institutional repositories (IRs) at ARL-member institutions in order to investigate name authority control in IRs and its relationships to metadata quality. Authority control is important to resource discovery because it provides collocation and search precision. However, a review of the literature indicates numerous challenges to establishing name authority control in IRs. Respondents were asked about their IR's metadata creation and management, metadata quality, metadata schemas, and usage of authority data and controlled vocabularies. The results of this exploratory study indicate that half of respondents have established name authority control in their repositories. The majority of respondents believe that there is a relationship between name authority control and metadata quality in IRs

Many Hands Make Light Work: Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) Training at University of Kentucky Libraries

Authority control, or the maintenance of consistent access points throughout a catalog, may not be the most exciting topic in the library world, but is increasing in importance as metadata schemas evolve and linked data applications emerge. UK has developed multiple strategies for maintaining its catalog\u27s authority control, and, most recently, has undertaken NACO training

Many Hands Make Light Work: Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO) Training at University of Kentucky Libraries

Authority control, or the maintenance of consistent access points throughout a catalog, may not be the most exciting topic in the library world, but is increasing in importance as metadata schemas evolve and linked data applications emerge. UK has developed multiple strategies for maintaining its catalog\u27s authority control, and, most recently, has undertaken NACO training

Report of the DAMENames Ad Hoc Committee

In early 2018, the DAMEid group requested that Cataloging and Metadata unit examine the metadata needs for the DAME. When analyzing metadata needs in both OAKTrust and Fedora, it became clear that the lack of name authority control was causing serious problems for users, especially in the case of a single author having many entries in the author index. For example, Steven M. Wright, Royce E. Wisenbaker, Professor II in Chemical and Electrical Engineering, has 10 different entries for his name. This problem is caused by the lack of authority control and the inconsistent ways in which names are inputted into Vireo and OAKTrust. In their report to the DAMEid committee, the Metadata and Cataloging librarians strongly suggested that some type of name authority control be implemented within the DAME. In smaller repositories with few names and fewer entities (e.g., persons, organizations, subjects, etc.), the absence of explicit disambiguation or authority control can be a manageable problem. When only a few authors share a name, it is easy to tell them apart based on the subject matter of the works attached to the name. The problem compounds as collections grow larger and the number of entities with the same name that need to be distinguished from each other increases. For example, in the large OAKTrust IR, it is hard for a user to identify the "Steven Wright" that he or she is looking for, as there are several authors so named with dozens of items in the IR. Another issue that emerges in a system with no authority control – such as OAKTrust – is that an everyday typographical error (an extra space, no period after an initial, misspellings, etc.) results in a new entry in the author list. This results in multiple names for one person and it means that there is no way for a user to easily identify all the works attributed to one author

Review of Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control is a new and thoughtful addition to the metadata and cataloging field of study and practice. Consisting of eighteen essays written by a number of libraries, archives, and information scholars, this edited volume investigates and responds to a number of ethical questions regarding name authority control.These include topics such as the privacy of the creator, use of geographic names for contested lands, critique of the use of gender in authority control systems, as well as considerations around multilingualism, to name a few. While the title mostly appeals to a particular field of work and study, the essays each communicate the various complexities of controlling, managing, and representing information

Designing Authority Data Properties Based on Microdata Method and Study of Web Search Engines’ Reaction to Them

Objective: The purpose of this research was to study the Search Engine’s responses to authority data properties embedded into schema.org-based metadata on the Microdata syntax. Methods: The experimental method was used in this research. The research population comprised 400 records of authority metadata based on the Microdata method from the digital library of Allameh Tabataba'i University. The examination group consisted of 200 metadata records, 100 records with authority data extensions embedded into schema.org-based metadata in the Microdata syntax and 100 other similar records in the JSON-LD syntax (50 samples of name authority, and 50 other subject authority) And the control group consisted of 200 Records, including 100 Records related to the description of the book in the Microdata syntax and 100 other similar records in the JSON-LD syntax. The records have been published on the independent website at www.Aghadeh.ir and have been introduced to the Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex search engines as designers of the schema.org standard. Then, through searching the search engines, using the data gathering tool, the checklist provided by the researchers, the indexing and retrieval of the metadata records of the control groups and experimental groups were evaluated in the search results of the selected search engines. Results: The results of this study showed that search engines were able to index and retrieve all of the metadata records and values of added extensions associated with authority data. Such a possibility had the same status for the name authority records and the subject authority data. Conclusions: By retrieving each of the variant properties’ values of examination group’s records, in addition to the authorized values of the name and subject terms, a suitable platform for the comprehensiveness of the retrieve process, and the authority control in the Web search tools will be improved

Use existing data first: Reconcile metadata before creating new controlled vocabularies

pre-printThe use of controlled vocabularies is essential in the creation of metadata for digital collections in order to provide consistency and ease of use for patrons and researchers. The University of Utah has been working to clean up metadata for digital collections to ensure that data adheres to best practices with the use of specific, controlled vocabularies. This has included a major data-cleanup project utilizing multiple approaches including a vendor's authority control service, data reconciliation in OpenRefine, and the exploration of different tools used for the creation and maintenance of local controlled vocabularies

Name Disambiguation for Digital Collections: Planning a Linked Data App for Authority Control at Texas A&M University Libraries

Presented at the LD4 Conference on Linked Data in Libraries, Boston, MA, on May 11, 2019.This presentation describes plans that are being made for the creation of an “authority control” app for names within repositories at Texas A&M University. The purpose of this app is to serve as a tool for library staff, external metadata providers, and repository users to identify and disambiguate individual persons, as well as link to contextual data in external sources (e.g., Library of Congress Name Authority File, ISNI, ORCID, etc.)