Versioning for Authorities, presentation at Midwinter Chicago 2015
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Presentation to the Authority Control Interest Group at ALA Midwinter, Chicago 2015. Discusses the traditional function of authority control and its limitations,as well as newer sources of identification for people that broaden our ideas of what identity should be.
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Versioning for Authorities, presentation at Midwinter Chicago 2015
- 1. Versioning for Authorities Authority Control IG, Chicago Midwinter 2015
- 2. Topics Questioning our assumptions about Authority Control Differences between records and people NAF ‘Work’ records Limitations of our current approach What’s online now? Other sources of name data? 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 2
- 3. NAF for Person 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 3
- 4. Current Approach Limitations of library authority control: Focus is on name variants to support unique text strings Record ID in NAF, SAF and VIAF are not name IDs ORCID, ISNI, etc. intended to identify person Rules don’t support references and ‘outlinks’ Centralized management both a strength & weakness Doesn’t address needs for more automated solutions 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 4
- 5. Name Aggregation VIAF—an aggregation of authority records Records gathered are used to create services and visualizations Timelines Associates, works, publishers, etc. Versioned in a manner different from id.loc.gov, but with significant limitations Policy documentation missing 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 5
- 8. What changed? Was it a semantic change? 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 8
- 9. Usage Questions If we use URIs for names and subjects, should we also cache the data behind them? If we cache, we need to worry about change management What kind of support will we expect from external systems? How do we express those expectations? What constitutes change in a name ID file? 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 9
- 11. ORCID “ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.” Began as a way to disambiguate scientific researchers, now more broadly used Encourages linking ORCID with other identifiers 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 11
- 13. ISNI Audience: libraries, publishers, databases and rights management organizations Website and API access Limited online input Online enrichment data moderated Users must request ISNI through organizations charged with maintaining the information 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 13
- 14. NAF ISNI ORCID 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 14 *Centrally managed and distributed *Expert input only *Files available, no persistent deletes *Centrally managed *Some ‘improvement’ by non-experts *Must be signed in to add data *Self-registration and content management by acct. owner *Some ‘private’ data not available via public API *Member institutions can integrate access and update
- 16. Developed for ...? Managing fixed name/title strings as ‘works’ made more sense in the catalog card days Does it make sense now? Will RDA supplant this tradition with ‘work’ entity records? Some compilations (Bible, historically anonymous titles) may require a hybrid approach 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 16
- 17. Dealing with change Many flavors of version control! Fine granularity at transaction level Dated URIs (may be links to earlier versions) Last date only (unspecified changes) Linked access to old versions Dated release number (and sometime diffs) Most recent raw file availability 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 17
- 18. Alternatives? We need to find something which is optimized for automated updating The model for software versioning and updating is already used by all of us (even if we’re unaware of it) ‘Semantic versioning’ (semver.org) can be used to bring similar version control options to semantic information (elements, vocabularies, etc.) 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 18
- 19. 3 tier numbering system: major.minor.patch X.X.X Major: breaks backwards semantic compatibility Minor: change in semantics of any property of any element Patch: no change in semantics of any element Semantic Versioning 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 19
- 20. Smart Semantics Smooth interaction between application and vocab Transparent to users (until major change requires some user decisions) Distributed version control (Git, etc.) Vocabulary managers trusted to comply with (simple) semantic versioning policies and practices And encouraged to provide details of semantic breakage between major versions 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 20
- 22. Remaining Questions How do we make the shift from assuming human one- by-one lookup to the kind of environment we see in the software industry? Is that lack of capability one of the reasons that the vendors have been holding back? How much of a problem is it that the ‘new IDs’ (ORCID and ISNI) don’t seem to do semantic versioning? Are they assuming only lookup will maintain their ‘share of the market?’ 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 22
- 23. No More Handcrafting! RIMMF’s automated approaches emphasize using available sources, like NAF If a name cannot be made unique, does it matter? Moves the requirement of uniqueness to URI, not string Does that mean we can stop worrying about undifferentiated names? 2/1/15ACIG/MW 2015 23
Editor's Notes
- What to do about aggregations like VIAF? Are they truly a step forward?
- Still focused on disambiguation of names, but in an international context. The IDs are primarily record based (or based on the aggregation of records), except for the ISNI, labeled as a ‘test’. VIAF has a limited notion of co-authors (their gathering term for relationships of various kinds). For instance, Emma Thompson is listed as a co-author.
- This is the bottom part of the version history on VIAF for Jane Austen, showing the link for RSS Feeds. Each change is dated and the transaction typed, but some of the links do not resolve.
- ID.loc.gov is a site used by LC to expose some of their vocabularies—the relator terms are one of them. A few years ago they were re-factored, and significant changes made. There are very sparse indications of the change and no way to see the prior version—making all the modifications listed in the ‘Change Notes’ completely opaque.
- Examples of change in name. Why caching is used: protects systems from network slowdowns or failures. Plus, if the caches are retained for the purposes of ‘roll-back’ there remains a raw path to previous versions.
- One of the newer ‘name’ information and ID systems is ORCID, begun by a consortium of science publishers to assist in identifying researchers whose publications carry truncated names (surname and forename initials). The information shown here is for my ORCID id, for which I provided the information about my education, employment, and professional efforts (Including papers). The information for this ID goes on for several pages, and can be edited when signed in. ORCID grows by the use self-registration for information on researchers.
- ISNI uses available, trusted sources to set up information and identifiers. If the sources they use do not always include individuals without formal publications, but there is a process for getting one for yourself—not as simple or as extensive as ORCID. If you take the invitation to improve the record, you are set to a very unstructured form. You don’t have to be signed in, but there is a Captcha on the form. I didn’t initiate the creation of the ISNI ID—it was pulled from my LCNAF record. Getting an ISNI if there’s nothing in any of the source databases
- Fine granularity (OMR) Dated URIs (DCMI and Dewey) Last date only (id.loc.gov and BibFrame) Linked access to old versions (schema.org)