Re: LOC Authority Data

Of course there is always the version of the LC/NACO file we've had up
for years at http://errol.oclc.org/ (e.g.
http://errol.oclc.org/laf/n+90602202.html).   People might also be
interested in http://viaf.org which doesn't have the original authority
records, but does have 'enhanced' versions.  VIAF is going to change
quite a bit over the next few months, but the expectation is that much
of the information is going to be publicly available.

--Th

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Houghton,Andrew
Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:43 PM
To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Authority Data

> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf
Of
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2008 4:35 PM
> To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LOC Authority Data
> 
> The NAF (Name/National Authority File) is still one important database
> that we are missing any kind of good machine access to, I believe.

Agreed.  As part of our research project we have enhanced some of the
vocabulary data in the service to provide mappings and links between
vocabularies.  One issue we noticed with FAST was that many of the
mapped terms were not being linked.  We tracked this back to the term
being in NAF rather than in LCSH.  So to make the FAST data more usable
we would have to include the entire LC authority file, both names and
subjects.  It is something we are looking into at the moment...

Andy.