Spelling it all out:FRAD, ISNI, RDA, VIAF automation and the future of authority control

Alan Danskin

Metadata & Bibliographic Standards Coordinator

British Library

A. Rose, by any other name: a workshop on authority control

CILIP HQ, Ridgmount St., London Friday 23rd October, 2009

2

Overview

Challenge Scope Scalability Automation

The solution?

–Interparty, FRAD, RDA, MARC 21,

–EAC, FO:AF; ISNI, VIAF, Names 2

Conclusions

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Functions of the catalogue

“The catalogue should be an efficient instrument for ascertaining…which works by a particular author are in the library.”

Statement of Principles, Paris, 1961

“The catalogue should be an effective and efficient instrument that enables a user …to find sets of resources representing all resources associated with a given person, family, or corporate body”

Statement of International Cataloguing Principles, 2009

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Scope of authority control

Which names do we control? Names of authors and some contributors of published books Composers of sheet music Names of corporate bodies responsible for official publications Names associated with resources catalogued since 1981 Names associated with audio or audio visual resources, where possible

Which names do we exclude? Names of authors of journal articles or chapters of published books Contributors whose names fall towards the end of the alphabet or whose

contribution we regard as insignificant Names associated with archival or manuscript material Names derived from older catalogues Names associated with most Web Resources Names in the content management system / institutional repository

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Publication and research

“The only major exceptions to the dominance of the journal article are the continuing high status attached to monographs and edited volumes in the humanities, and to practice-based outputs in the arts. Yet even in the humanities, journal articles are now by far the largest publication format by volume;”

“In computer science, for example, the pace of change means that conferences are particularly important, and these may attract higher prestige than journal articles…Repositories have achieved less traction in the humanities and social sciences than in many science and engineering subjects. “

Communicating knowledge: How & why UK researchers publish & disseminate their findings / Research Information Network and JISC. 17 September 2009http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/communicatingknowledgereport.aspx

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The problem

There is a gap between ambition and delivery

Only some names on some types of resources are controlled

User expectations are changing

Silos: Libraries / Archives / Repositories / Museums National practices Institutional practices Variance over time

Is partial authority control acceptable to users?

If not, will it be acceptable to administrators?

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UK “published” output 2009-09

2008-9 Resources v Authorities

0 400,000 800,000 1,200,000

UK WebDomain (Est.)

ETOC Articles

UK LegalDeposit

UKRepositories

BL/NACO

Total LC/NACO

Ty

pe

Number

Authorities

Resources

213404

1525662

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Workflows

Current workflows are not scalable

Retrospective

Cataloguer driven

Decision making Is A. Rose PhD the same person as Dr. Alex Rose,

University of London? What other information is available? Is it sufficient to match or disambiguate the identities? Is there a website / contact details?

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Rethinking the process

Capture information about the person, family or corporate body at the time the resource is created

Devolve responsibility to authors, publishers, researchers and academics

Libraries and bibliographic agencies focus on quality control, complex relationships and conflict resolution.

Capture information in a way that is machine intelligible. Identification of entities not disambiguation of headings

100 10. $aLuckombe, Philip,$dd. 1803

046 ## $g1803100 10. $aLuckombe, Philip,$dd. 1803

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Automation

Identification ISNI

Contextual information FRAD, RDA, MARC 21

Matching VIAF, Names

Linking Controlled vocabularies

Confidence

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Models

Interparty - http://www.interparty.org/ EU Project 2002-2003 Public identities not persons Linking not merging Authority – i.e. who makes the assertion

FRAD Functional Requirements for Authority Data Extension of FRBR model to authority data Separation of names from the person, family or corporate

body Recognition of different rules

http://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-series-on-bibliographic-control-34

I nterParty

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The nature of Public I dentities

Person

Public Identity

Public Identity

Relationships between real persons and

public identities

out of scope

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13

choice of access points

form of headings

references

FRBR relationships

attributes of FRAD entities

FRAD relationships

access points are controlled

RDA will replace AACR2

RDA is based on the FRBR and FRAD Models

AACR2 does not cover authority control

RDA does, but doesn’t use the term authority control

http://www.rda-jsc.org/

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ISNI: International Standard Name Identifier

ISNI 1422 4586 3573 0476

Registration Metadata

http://www.isni.org/

Draft ISO Standard (ISO 27729)

A “bridge “

Identification of Public Identities Natural Persons Legal Persons Fictional Characters Groups Incorporated entities

Libraries, rights management, book trade, publishers, media content industries

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VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

Match & Link Authority Files Reduce costs Increase utility Retrospective alignment of bibliographic data

Prototype http://viaf.org/

Linked Data

http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2009/09/viaf-as-linked-data.html

OCLC

Bibliothèque nationale de France

Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt)

National Library of the Czech Republic

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

National Library of Israel

Library of Congress/NACO

National Library of Sweden

Vatican Library

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Names

Funded by JISC Repositories and preservation programme Led by MIMAS British Library is a partner

National Names Service

Phase 1 – prototype Data model based on FRAD Mappings from MARC 21; ISAAR CPF; SWAP; NLM DTD

Phase 2 – Develop national names service Author submission Institutional Repositories UKPMC Intute

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It’s not just about libraries…

FO:AF Friend of a Friend Social networking metadata Granularity of parts of a name

http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/

EAC-CPF: Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families Communication standard for exchange of authority records ISAAR (CPF) Draft Standard

http://eac.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/

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Conclusion

Controlling names remains important in the context of linked data and the Semantic Web

Identification and collocation of variants is more important than establishing a preferred form

Current techniques are not scalable

Automation and participation are the way forward

Web services for identification

No simple solution

Exension of the collaborative model

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Links and references

<EAC-CPF>Encoded Archival Context: Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families http://eac.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/

FO:AF (Friend of a Friend)http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/

Functional Requirements for Authority Data: a conceptual modelhttp://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-series-on-bibliographic-control-34

International Standard Names Identifier (ISNI)http://www.isni.org/

Interparty Project http://www.interparty.org/

Communicating knowledge: how & why UK researchers publish & disseminate their findingshttp://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/communicatingknowledgereport.aspx

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Links and references

The knowledge network: British Library annual report & accounts, 2008/09http://www.bl.uk/about/annual/2008to2009/index.html

Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate Report of Fiscal Year 2008 (Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 2008) http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/aba08.pdf

Names Projecthttp://names.mimas.ac.uk/

Statement of International Cataloguing Principleshttp://www.ifla.org/publications/statement-of-international-cataloguing-principles

RDA: Resource Description & Accesshttp://www.rda-jsc.org/

United Kingdom Repositories: table of record totalshttp://www.nostuff.org/ircount/table.php?frequency=monthly&country=uk

Virtual International Authority File: VIAFhttp://viaf.org/