69 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
69 lines
6.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Authority control"
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chunk: 3/3
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authority_control"
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category: "reference"
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tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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date_saved: "2026-05-05T07:22:25.700102+00:00"
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instance: "kb-cron"
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---
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For example, the Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, who lived from 1911 to 1966, wrote under many pen names such as Flann O'Brien and Myles na Gopaleen. Catalogers at the United States Library of Congress chose one form—"O'Brien, Flann, 1911–1966"—as the official heading. The example contains all three elements of a valid authority record: the first heading O'Brien, Flann, 1911–1966 is the form of the name that the Library of Congress chose as authoritative. In theory, every record in the catalog that represents a work by this author should have this form of the name as its author heading. What follows immediately below the heading beginning with Na Gopaleen, Myles, 1911–1966 are the see references. These forms of the author's name will appear in the catalog, but only as transcriptions and not as headings. If a user queries the catalog under one of these variant forms of the author's name, he or she would receive the response: "See O'Brien, Flann, 1911–1966." There is an additional spelling variant of the Gopaleen name: "Na gCopaleen, Myles, 1911–1966" has an extra C inserted because the author also employed the non-anglicized Irish spelling of his pen-name, in which the capitalized C shows the correct root word while the preceding g indicates its pronunciation in context. So if a library user comes across this spelling variant, he or she will be led to the same author regardless. See also references, which point from one authorized heading to another authorized heading, are exceedingly rare for personal name authority records, although they often appear in name authority records for corporate bodies. The final four entries in this record beginning with His At Swim-Two-Birds ... 1939. constitute the justification for this particular form of the name: it appeared in this form on the 1939 edition of the author's novel At Swim-Two-Birds, whereas the author's other noms de plume appeared on later publications.
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== Access control ==
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The act of choosing a single authorized heading to represent all forms of a name is quite often a difficult and complex task, considering that any given individual may have legally changed their name or used a variety of legal names in the course of their lifetime, as well as a variety of nicknames, pen names, stage names or other alternative names. It may be particularly difficult to choose a single authorized heading for individuals whose various names have controversial political or social connotations, when the choice of authorized heading may be seen as endorsement of the associated political or social ideology.
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An alternative to using authorized headings is the idea of access control, where various forms of a name are related without the endorsement of one particular form.
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== Cooperative cataloging ==
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Before the advent of digital online public access catalogs and the Internet, individual cataloging departments within each library generally carried out creating and maintaining a library's authority files. Naturally, there was a considerable difference in the authority files of the different libraries. For the early part of library history, it was generally accepted that, as long as a library's catalog was internally consistent, the differences between catalogs in different libraries did not matter greatly.
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As libraries became more attuned to the needs of researchers and began interacting more with other libraries, the value of standard cataloging practices came to be recognized. With the advent of automated database technologies, catalogers began to establish cooperative consortia, such as OCLC and RLIN in the United States, in which cataloging departments from libraries all over the world contributed their records to, and took their records from, a shared database. This development prompted the need for national standards for authority work.
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In the United States, the primary organization for maintaining cataloging standards with respect to authority work operates under the aegis of the Library of Congress Program for Cooperative Cataloging. It is known as the Name Authority Cooperative Program, or NACO Authority.
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== Standards ==
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There are various standards using different acronyms.
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=== Standards for authority metadata ===
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MARC standards for authority records in machine-readable format.
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Metadata Authority Description Schema (MADS), an XML schema for an authority element set that may be used to provide metadata about agents (people, organizations), events, and terms (topics, geographics, genres, etc.).
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Encoded Archival Context, an XML schema for authority records conforming to ISAAR.
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=== Standards for object identification, controlled by an identification-authority ===
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Legal personality identification systems (person-IDs) and authorities:
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serey
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(CPF) – International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families. Published by the International Council on Archives
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ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier
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ORCID – Open Researcher and Contributor ID, a subset of the ISNI, to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors.
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DAI – Digital Author Identification, another subset of ISNI.
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GRID – Global Research Identifier Database
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GND – Integrated Authority File (Gemeinsame Normdatei), authority file for personal names, corporate bodies and subject headings.
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KANTO – National Agent Data (finaf), authority file for persons and corporate bodies.
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LCCN – Library of Congress Control Number
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NDL – National Diet Library
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VIAF – Virtual International Authority File, an aggregation of authority files currently focused on personal and corporate names.
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WorldCat/identities
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Bibliographic object identification systems and authorities:
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DOI – Digital object identifier
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urn:lex, for law-document identifiers, controlled by local law authorities.
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ISBN – International Standard Book Number
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ISSN – International Standard Serial Number
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Other identification systems (for generic named-entities) and authorities:
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GeoNames
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TGN – Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
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=== Standards for identified-object metadata ===
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vCard
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Dublin Core
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== See also ==
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Persistent identifier
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Knowledge Organization Systems
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Library classification systems:
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Dewey Decimal Classification
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Library of Congress Classification
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Ontology (information science)
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Proprietary services
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ResearcherID
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Registration authority
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Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
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== References == |