<$BlogRSDUrl$> Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant
Internet Happenings, Events and Sources


Thursday, November 20, 2003  

The LEAF Project: New Ways of Sharing and Using Authority Information
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november03/lieder/11lieder.html

This article presents an overview of the LEAF project (Linking and Exploring Authority Files), which has set out to provide a framework for international, collaborative work in the sector of authority data with respect to authority control.

Elaborating the virtues of authority control in today's Web environment is an almost futile exercise, since so much has been said and written about it in the last few years.2 The World Wide Web is generally understood to be poorly structured—both with regard to content and to locating required information. Highly structured databases might be viewed as small islands of precision within this chaotic environment. Though the Web in general or any particular structured database would greatly benefit from increased authority control, it should be noted that our following considerations only refer to authority control with regard to databases of "memory institutions" (i.e., libraries, archives, and museums). Moreover, when talking about authority records, we exclusively refer to personal name authority records that describe a specific person. Although different types of authority records could indeed be used in similar ways to the ones presented in this article, discussing those different types is outside the scope of both the LEAF project and this article.

posted by Marcus Zillman | 5:12 AM
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