Authority Addicts:The New Frontier of Authority

Control on Wikidata

Virtual International Authority File

● A merged super authority file● Algorithmically matching of entities

● First murmurs 1998

Virtual International Authority File

● Originally between● the Library of Congress (LC)

● the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB)● the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF)

● and OCLC

And now including

Sample record

Also with experimental imports

Wikipedia as Authority File

● Provides disambiguation of names● With unique identifiers (URIs)

Wikidata as Super Authority File

● Since it connects many Authority Files– Which are Wikipedias

Comparison of Super Authority

Filesby size

Matching VIAF and Wikipedia

● German manual efforts– Matched PND and VIAF and others to de.wiki– ~200,000 matches

● VIAF algorithm– Matched VIAF to en.wiki– ~250,000 matches

● French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Japanese manual efforts

Merged and migrated to Wikidata

Disagreements

Quality Assurance● In traditional AC inaccuracies could be

reported.– Wait and wait.

● Now, disagreement lead to investigation– And direct resolution on Wikidata– This is a major benefit of Wikidata

And can view differences in

content

Label and Alias Fill by botin 49

languages

The short term implications

● Can synchronize the differences● Improve the quality of both files

● Improve the completeness of both files

Longer term implication

● Coexistence of the two?● Is it possible or desirable that Wikidata

could replace VIAF?