a. rose by any other name

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A. Rose by any other name

A new approach to name authority

Amanda Hill@mandahill

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The Names Project‘From the Annals of the Onomastic

Society’

Ian Watson (1990)

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Rhyming couples

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JISC Conference, 2010http://www.pryers-solicitors.co.uk/blog/clinical-negligence-news/mix-up-leads-to-surgeons-operating-on-wrong-patient/

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Academic impact Immunologist Alexandra Nicole

Rose

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nitsrejk/42284247/

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Forms of name Rose, A. N. Alexandra Rose A. N. Rose Alexandra N. Rose Rose, Alexandra N. Rose, Alexandra Nicole Rose, Alexandra Alexandra Nicole Rose

And these are all spelt correctly!

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2009/08/initials-and-names.html

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Background Repositories Programme

People depositing copies of their papers, learning materials, slides in institutional and subject-based digital repositories

Need to add name (and other) data to the digital object for information retrieval

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What? Names of people involved in creating

materials

Names of institutions and (perhaps) departments

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Retrieval Users/administrators/funders may

want to find all articles by a particular individual

Difficult if the name has been entered in a variety of ways

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Disambiguation Need to retrieve only those materials

deposited by that particular individual

With common names, there will be many matches – loss of precision

Need to be able to uniquely identify individuals Ideally using principles of Linked Data

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What is the Names Project? A JISC-funded Mimas project in collaboration with the British Library Phase 1 (July 2007 – February 2009):

Investigated the potential and requirements for a Name Authority Service A prototype was developed with test set of data

Phase 2: (March 2009 – February 2011):Expand prototype into pilot systemLook at future options as a service

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Mimas British Library

Millions of names of

active researchers

Only initials, not full

forenames

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Process Use Zetoc to pre-populate the Names

system Identify unique individuals and assign

identifiers

Enhance data with information from other sources e.g. UKPMC grantees database

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Names Phase One Activities Establish requirements

Determine data structure

Map to existing name-related standards (e.g. MARC, EAC-CPF, CERIF, FOAF)

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Current phase Testing matching algorithms Reviewing data structure Updating data mappings for revised

and new standards Collaborating with potential data

providers and Names users

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Demo http://names.mimas.ac.uk/

http://names.mimas.ac.uk/script-test-two/

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RDF version of record

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Longer term Allow researchers to edit their own

information (e.g. to specify a preferred form of name)

Arrange for upload of information from universities repositories funding bodies

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Broader context Lots of activity in this area right now

ORCID (Open Researcher Contributor Identifier) VIAF & WorldCat Identities(OCLC) ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier) Various national initiatives in other countries

Netherlands Norway Australia New Zealand Poland/Spain (under consideration)

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Names matter…

In 2000 there were seven people in the USA with the name Robert Pattinson. howmanyofme.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23A0qzm374g

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Project updates Names website:

http://names.mimas.ac.uk

Project blog:http://namesproject.wordpress.com

Twitter: @NamesProject