[DCRM-L] FW: MetaMan IG: Exciting News! VIAF Moving from Harvesting English Wikipedia to Wikidata!

[Kathie Coblentz]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:53 PM, <dcrm-l-request at lib.byu.edu> wrote:

> From: "Noble, Richard" <richard_noble at brown.edu>
> To: "DCRM Users' Group" <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2015 14:52:19 -0400
> Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] FW: MetaMan IG: Exciting News! VIAF Moving from
> Harvesting English WIkipedia to Wikidata!
> A "by the way" question: Is there a "best practices" out there somewhere
> for citing VIAF in authority records, and especially for dealing with its
> record of all records aspect? Should individual national-level records be
> cited independently, citing VIAF as more of an access point than an
> "authority" in itself? Boiling it all down to a 670 can be rather a
> challenge ...
>
> Thanks - Richard Noble
>
> RICHARD NOBLE :: RARE MATERIALS CATALOGUER :: JOHN HAY LIBRARY
> BROWN UNIVERSITY  ::  PROVIDENCE, R.I. 02912  ::  401-863-1187
> <Richard_Noble at Br <RICHARD_NOBLE at BROWN.EDU>own.edu>
>

I would appreciate a standardized "best practices" also. Meanwhile, here is
what I've gradually settled on:

1) If there is only one VIAF cluster for the name (not infrequently there
are several), and everyone has more or less the same data so that nothing
particularly new or different is found there, I content myself with adding
an 024 field with the VIAF ID number. Usually another with the ISNI number,
while I'm at it.

2) If there are significant differences among forms of the name or
additions to the name, etc., that I want to record, I've learned a trick.
Open the cluster so that a list of the variant forms appears at the top,
with each variant followed by one or more small symbols representing the
institution or institutions using a given form. Highlight the entire block
of names, including the symbols, and hit "copy." Now, a caveat: this only
works in some browsers; in my experience, IE and Firefox, but not Chrome.
But if you have the right browser, when you now paste your clipboard
contents as plain text into a text or word processor file, you should get
each variant followed by the name(s) of the institutions employing it (that
is, the "alternative text" that's coded in with the images of the
institution symbols). Replace the paragraph marks that separate the
variants with semicolons, add a colon after each variant and separate the
institution names with commas (or semicolons if needed for clarity), and
voila, there is a ready-made 670 note listing the variants you found in
VIAF on a given date, and what institutions are using which.

3) I've used the above method in the case of multiple clusters representing
a single identity, also. In that case, I treat the VIAF ID numbers like
different locations (pages in a printed resource). I begin a single 670
note with "VIAF," [date], then in the $b subfield I successively enter the
VIAF ID numbers. After each one, I open a set of parentheses, add data as
outlined above, and close the parentheses. Then another VIAF ID number,
another set of parentheses, and so on. In this case, I don't add any VIAF
data in an 024 field, since I assume or at least hope that one day all the
variants will be in a single cluster with a single number.

4) If I want to cite a specific institution's form of the name or other
data, I might say, "So-and-so in VIAF, [date]." However, if it is easily
possible to get from VIAF to the actual authority record for that
institution, as it is in the case of the Bibliothèque nationale de France,
the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and some others, then I go there and don't
bother with the "in VIAF" part. (As an aside, the method described in #2
will give you an English-language form of the institution name, but I
figure that should be adequate for the purposes of a 670 note.)

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to others. And if I'm doing
something wrong, I would like to hear about that, too!

--------------------------------------------------------
Kathie Coblentz, Rare Materials Cataloger
Special Collections/Special Formats Processing
The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
5th Avenue and 42nd Street, Room 313
New York, NY  10018
kathiecoblentz at nypl.org

My opinions, not NYPL's
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