Names and Identities

Karen Smith-YoshimuraThomas Hickey

2009 RLG Partnership Annual Meeting

Boston, MAJune 1-2, 2009

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Names touch everything….

AuthorsPublishersInstitutions

Musicians

Families

Government agencies

ArtistsFictional characters

Actors

Plant discoverers

Corporations

Pseudonyms

Illustrators

Editors

Translators

Correspondents

Historical figures

Directors

Scientists

Architects

Animals

PoliticiansInventors

Associations

Cartographers

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Names can be ambiguous…

“John Adams”… the US president? … the US composer?… the British

mathematician & astronomer?

… the British nuclear physicist?

… or someone else?

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Names depend on context…

蒋介石China, Japan:

蔣中正

شيانج آاي شيك

US: Chiang Kai-shek

France, Germany: Jiang Jieshi

Arabic-speaking countries:

Tamil: சங் ைக ெசக்

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Information sufficient to identify anddistinguish people and organizations iswidely dispersed…

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Networking NamesAdvisory Group

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Use case scenarios: Academic libraries and scholars

• Academic researcher• University department• Library cataloger• Student• Scholar

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Use case scenarios: Archivists and archival users

• Archivist creating narrative history

• Archivist complementing archival materials description

• Archival researcher identifying resources

• Archival researcher-expert

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Use case scenarios: Institutional repositories

• Researcher• Institutional repository

manager who needs to normalize researcher names

• Manager who needs to normalize corporate names

• Manager who needs to normalize department names

• Research information office manager

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Cooperative Identities Hub• Framework to concatenate and

merge authoritative information

• Gateway to all forms of names without preferring one form over another

• Use social networking model

• Provide a switch to extract relevant information for re-use in own contexts

• Create federated trust environment to authenticate and authorize contributors

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Hub objectives• Increase metadata creation

efficiency• Easier to identify identity

regardless of language or discipline

• Determine preferred form within own context

• Enable contributing agencies to augment own data resources

• Expose information about personal and corporate bodies beyond original contexts

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Hub functions

• Searches by both people and software applications

• Edit: Add information, merge, split, flag for deletion

• Create new entities

• Batch update

• Discussion

• Audit trail and rollback

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What do we have?

• A vision of an Identities Hub• Thousands of libraries, archives, and museums

• WorldCat bibliographic & holdings data• LC/NACO Name Authority File• Other library authority files

• WorldCat Identities• A page for name in WorldCat

• Virtual International Authority File• A merge of a dozen national-level authority files

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WorldCat Identities

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Searching Identities

Jump to Editing

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More WorldCat Identities

Jump to Editing

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Editing WorldCat Identities

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Merged result

Immediately visible in IdentitiesPersistent in IdentitiesInformation fed into established channels

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Plans

• Implement editing in Research version of Identities• Feed information (manually) into WorldCat/NAF• Investigate how best to move to production• Explore relationship with the Virtual International

Authority File

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Discussion

• Additional use case scenarios for your environment?• What would benefit you the most?• What is most appealing about Identities? What else is

needed?