[Web4lib] Authors name standardization. Your opinion?

[Karen Coyle]

Mike Taylor wrote:
> Oh.  That seems like a _bad_ thing to me in the case of author
> identities.  I wonder whether you could suggest a couple of scenarios
> that illustrate the kind of functionality that you imagine this extra
> flexibility provides?  
I was thinking of the LCCN = bib record, not authority. In terms of 
authority... well, I don't know what kind of system we'd be using other 
than the LC authorities, but in essence, I think we have to assume that 
the records get distributed to many systems, and that you may have a 
query that is specific to that system. That doesn't mean that the 
author's identity changes, but different information may be available 
from different sources. So I can imagine being in a local catalog, that 
has both bib and authority records, and wanting to see the authority 
info linked from an author on your screen. Assuming we have an 
identifier (lccn:xxxxx), you might offer the user the local authority 
record (which could have some added info if the library's community has 
a particular interest in that author, say a professor at the 
institution), the LC database record (neutral, but authoritative), or 
the Wikipedia entry (which would be in a narrative form), if wp is 
accessible through the same identifier string.

It seems that you are assuming that there is one central place for 
author info. I guess I've given up on "one central place" for any public 
info.
>
>  > A "2.0" solution is best.
>
> Yes; because "2.0" is so meaningless that, whatever you do, you can
> claim it's 2.0 :-)
>
>
>   
I'll tell you what it means to me: distributed data across the web 
(read: network) that is accessed and reused in many ways, often using 
web services. Whatever we decide to call it (and I truly am neutral on 
its naming), the era of separate databases, data records staying put and 
unchanging, single "definitive" sources for information -- that's gone. 
This "flexibility" seems too chaotic to some folks, but having worked in 
the world of libraries for so many years I have come to live with a 
rather large measure of ambiguity. There are things that will defy the 
desire to create a perfect solution; author identity is one of those.

kc

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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
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