[Web4lib] Authors name standardization. Your opinion?

[Lars Aronsson]

Karen Coyle wrote:

> In the U.S. we do have the authority records from Library of 
> Congress, and each of those has an identifier. We haven't made 
> use of it, at least not in a visible way, in our catalogs. In 
> essence, the authoritative name is supposed to be an identifier, 
> it just happens to be a textual one. Each authoritative entry in 
> the file is unique.

Yes, this is the approach that Sweden's Royal Library also seems 
to take.  I still like the German/Czech system better, especially 
since ID numbers are stable across name changes and death years. 
The LoC "Erskine, Ralph, 1914-" will soon have to be updated to 
"Erskine, Ralph, 1914-2005".  And then, where is the stability in 
names?

If I go to http://catalog.loc.gov/ or http://authorities.loc.gov/ 
and do a search for Karel Capek, the name I find with 279 titles 
is "Čapek, Karel, 1890-1938", as distinguished from "Čapek, 
Karel, 1930-" and other people.  The LCCN for the authority record 
seems to be "n 50035042".  But is there any way I can make a web 
link based on such a name?  I'm not a big fan of this web 
interface.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se