I concur with Richard's analysis[1]. Each identifier type serves a
different community. In particular, ORCID identifiers will tend to
identify faculty and researchers whose sole output is journal articles
-- thus who would not normally appear in a library authority file. The
ISNI is sometimes seen as an interloper from the publishing community,
but most likely is integrated into the publisher workflow (e.g. writing
checks to authors).
Like Richard, I don't see anything to worry about. You can use one,
some, or all of the identifiers based on your needs. So a faculty
digital repository may need to used ORCIDs because there are authors who
are only identified by those. (Repositories are beginning to require
ORCIDs for deposit.) The same repository can also use LCNA for some
authors -- you are in no way limited to one identifier per person or
system. If you are hoping to pull in author data in your library catalog
from wiki/DB/pedia, then you might favor the VIAF identifier, since this
is being linked to the "pedia" world.
This seems to me to be quite similar to other data and metadata choices
that we make: define your use case, then choose the data that meets that
need.
kc
[1] One possible difference is that I would consider ORCID a viable URI
for linked data purposes, although at the moment ORCID does not export
its data in RDF. All of the identifiers listed below are HTTP URIs.
On 6/20/14, 7:56 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
Hi Eric,
What distinguishes one from another?
The communities behind them, the [often overlapping] communities they
are intended to serve, and the technical implementation.
As a librarian, why should I care?
I would, as a non-librarian, suggest that once you are happy with
the ‘authority’ of them, you shouldn’t have to care. Ideally, we are not
there yet, systems should be flexible and accommodating enough to link to
any appropriate authority.
I will probably get flamed for over generalisation here but - VIAF is
an aggregation of National Libraries Authority files. - ISNI is a more
publisher focused but similar effort. - OCID comes from and and tries to
serve individual academic institutions, their researchers and falsity
authors.
authority control |simple identifier |Linked Data capability
+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
VIAF | X | X | X |
+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
ORCID | | X | |
+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
ISNI | X | X | X |
+-----------------+------------------+--------------+
~Richard
On 20 June 2014 15:42, Eric Lease Morgan <emor...@nd.edu> wrote:
On Jun 20, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Richard Wallis <
richard.wal...@dataliberate.com> wrote:
ISNI has a suite of programs that detects pseudonyms coded as name
variants
and changes them into related name and generates related identity
records.
It is a while since it was run and will be re-run in the next few weeks.
This should change Currer Bell into a related name of Charlotte Brontë .
Please humor me as I ask this question again. What is the difference
between ISNI and other identifiers systems (like ORCID, etc.)? What
distinguishes one from another? As a librarian, why should I care? Was as a
faculty member/scholar, why should I care? Under what context is one
identifier expected to be used instead of another? Maybe a picture/graph is
in order:
authority control simple pointer
+-----------------+--------------+
VIAF | X | |
+-----------------+--------------+
ORCID | | X |
+-----------------+--------------+
ISNI | | |
+-----------------+--------------+
—
Eric Lease Morgan
--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
