Future of authority control

One of the areas this blog will cover is trends in authority control.  I think there will be more cooperation in the establishment of authority records.  This is covered in section 1.3 of the LC working group’s report, On the Record.  I see cooperation happening in a number of areas, from more participation through activities like funnel groups, such as the new ATLA SACO Funnel Project, to a broadening of responsibility in the area of training.  I also see the VIAF (see yesterday’s post) growing to include the abstracting and indexing community.  My ideal would incorporate all worldwide forms of an author’s name, with appropriate computer coding to spit out the right form based on the origination of the query.  Apparently work incorporating publishers and indexers, with input from the library community, has begun, as I found evidence of a meeting that took place early in 2007, reported here.

VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

I am reading Deanna Marcum’s response to On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.  There are several places where she mentions VIAF, which is 

a joint project of the Library of Congress (LC), the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and OCLC. The project’s goal is to match and link the library authority files.

 

 so I decided to go check it out.  Try playing with the heading Wilms, Johann Wilhelm which includes links to authority records from all the participants.  I like the way you can see from the combined authority record the form used by each library, and click to get a full view of the individual records.