Weinheimer Jim wrote:
>
> Can it be that Italy has no books by Leo Tolstoy?!
> Of course not, but they use the Italian form,
> which would never even occur to a U.S. user: Tolstoj
> It then becomes clear to everyone
> that something needs to be done. In essence, there is a
> vital "piece" missing which merges all authority files
> which could be used by librarians and the public.
> But this is a different topic.
>
And an important one too. It gave rise to the VIAF project
currently under research at OCLC.
Ultimately, one can imagine an "Authority Google" of sorts,
a database somewhere in the background that can be consulted
automatically and transparently by catalog systems (or search
engines too) every time a personal name is requested. It would
return (in the positive case) an appropriate ID with which the
catalog in question can do the actual search.
With this concept in place, and authority files from the world
over merged into it eventually, libraries could well stick with
their national conventions for name headings instead of
kindly asking their patrons to find and enter enter LC forms of names.
The "Authority Google", in the negative case, might then display
a browse list of names (including all reference forms) in the
vicinity of the name as entered. Instead of "Sorry, no match" or
whatever.
B.Eversberg
Received on Thu Aug 23 2007 - 06:52:51 EDT