[Web4lib] Authors name standardization. Your opinion?

[Matthias Steffens]

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 18:54:02 -0500 Diane I. Hillmann wrote:
> In order to be able to use multiple sources of information about
> people, we're going to have to take a leap and start identifying
> people with something like a URI, and that's a pretty interesting
> problem, to say the least

Yes! I agree that this would be ideal. It would allow to tie all
kinds of information to it (person information, metadata,
affiliation info, pointers to local database records or to any
publications by this person, etc).

The OpenID project is a decentralized system that is based on URIs:

 <http://openid.net>

Regarding author identification, I understand the complexity of the
invloved issues and the problem of legacy data. However, from a
researcher's point of view, the issues around author identity pose a
major obstacle in daily scientific work and they prohibit smarter
tools to be build. Even a solution that would (currently) only work
for recent (or future) data would be a major boon.

I sincerely hope that the library community considers author
identity issues a top priority when moving onwards.

Thanks, Matthias
_____________________________________
Matthias Steffens     mat at extracts.de
       http://www.extracts.de