Names Project

Amanda Hill & Dan Needham

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/08/initials-and-names.html

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Background

Repositories Programme

People depositing copies of their papers, learning materials, slides in institutional and subject-based digital repositories

Need to add name (and other) data to the digital object for information retrieval

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What?

Names of people involved in creating materials

Names of institutions and (perhaps) departments

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Need to connect different forms of names

Murphy, M. L. Lynne Murphy M. L. Murphy M. Lynne Murphy Murphy, M. Lynne M. Lynne Murphy Murphy, Mary Lynne Murphy, Lynne

And these are all spelt correctly!

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Retrieval

Users/administrators/funders may want to find all articles by a particular individual

Difficult if the name has been entered in a variety of ways

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Disambiguation

Need to retrieve only those materials deposited by that particular individual

With common names, there will be many matches – loss of precision

Need to be able to uniquely identify individuals Ideally using principles of Linked Data

What is the Names Project? A JISC-funded Mimas project in collaboration with the British Library

Phase 1 (July 2007 – February 2009):

Investigated the potential and requirements for a Name Authority Service

A prototype was developed with test set of data

Phase 2: (March 2009 – February 2011):

Expand prototype into pilot system

Look at future options as a service

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Mimas British Library

Millions of names of

active researchers

Only initials, not full

forenames

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Process

Use Zetoc to pre-populate the Names system Identify unique individuals and assign

identifiers

Enhance data with information from other sources e.g. UKPMC grantees database

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Names Phase One Activities

Establish requirements

Determine data structure

Map to existing name-related standards (e.g. MARC, EAC-CPF, CERIF, FOAF)

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Current phase

Testing matching algorithms Reviewing data structure Updating data mappings for revised

and new standards Collaborating with potential data

providers and Names users

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Demo

http://names.mimas.ac.uk/individual/1

http://names.mimas.ac.uk/script-test-two/

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RDF version of record

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Longer term

Allow researchers to edit their own information (e.g. to specify a preferred form of name)

Arrange for upload of information from universities repositories funding bodies

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Broader context

Lots of activity in this area right now ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor Identifier) VIAF (OCLC) ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) Various national initiatives in other countries

Netherlands Australia Poland/Spain (under consideration)

Will be a while before a clear picture emerges

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Project updates

Names website: http://names.mimas.ac.uk

Project blog:

http://namesproject.wordpress.com

Twitter: @NamesProject