Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).[1]
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| Acronym | VIAF |
|---|---|
| Organisation | OCLC |
| Introduced | August 6, 2003 |
| Example | 106965171 |
| Website | viaf |
History
Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities. This would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process.[2]
The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress (LC), the German National Library (DNB) and the OCLC on August 6, 2003. The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) joined the project on October 5, 2007.
The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012.[3]
The aim is to link the national authority files (such as the German Name Authority File) to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are made available online and are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) protocol.
The file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata.[4][5]
VIAF clusters
VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month. As more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records.[6]
Participating libraries and organizations
Libraries added for testing purposes
| English Wikipedia entry name | Identifier | Native-language name | Location | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithuanian National Library | LIH | Lithuanian: Lietuvos nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo biblioteka | Vilnius | Lithuania |
| National and University Library of Slovenia / COBISS | SIMACOB | Slovene: Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, NUK | Ljubljana | Slovenia |
See also
- Authority control
- Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST)
- Integrated Authority File (GND)
- International Standard Authority Data Number (ISADN)
- International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI)
- Wikipedia's authority control template for articles
References
- Kelley, Michael; Schwartz, Meredith (2012). "VIAF service transitions to OCLC". Library Journal. Media Source Inc. 137 (8): 16.
- O'Neill, Edward T. (12 August 2016). "VIAF: Origins" (Video presentation). Authority Data on the Web, a Satellite Meeting of the 2016 IFLA World Library and Information Congress. OCLC.
- Murphy, Bob (4 April 2012). "Virtual International Authority File service transitions to OCLC; contributing institutions continue to shape direction through VIAF Council" (Press release). OCLC. Dublin, OH.
- Klein, Max; Renspie, Melissa (7 December 2012). "VIAFbot Edits 250,000 Wikipedia Articles to Reciprocate All Links from VIAF into Wikipedia". OCLC.
- Klein, Maximilian; Kyrios, Alex (14 October 2013). "VIAFbot and the Integration of Library Data on Wikipedia". The Code4Lib Journal (22). ISSN 1940-5758.
- Hickey, Thomas B.; Toves, Jenny A. (July 2014). "Managing Ambiguity In VIAF". D-Lib Magazine. Corporation for National Research Initiatives. 20 (7/8). doi:10.1045/july2014-hickey.
- MacEwan, Andrew (12 August 2016). "ISNI and VIAF" (Video presentation). Authority Data on the Web, a Satellite Meeting of the 2016 IFLA World Library and Information Congress. OCLC.
- "NACO - Name Authority Cooperative Program". Library of Congress.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to VIAF. |
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Wikidata has the property:
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