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The purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate a workflow for establishing name authority in uncontrolled collections.

The authors developed a workflow incorporating command-line tools and tested it in the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) collection. The authors narrowed the scope of the study to born-digital ETDs in the collection and to contributor names, including chairs and committee members.

This workflow can save staff time and allows for flexible implementation depending on staff numbers and skills as well as institutional needs.

This workflow could be used by other institutions with little or no modification, as it does not rely on specialized software or extensive expertise.

The purpose of this article is to examine “first time use” (FTU) name headings in the context of outsourced authorities processing and NACO participation, with consideration given to workflow and management issues in cataloging operations, and to the concept of achieving authority control in a catalog.

For this study, a report was produced from an integrated library system of 295 “headings used for first time” (FTU) on one day in a month during which more than 10,000 bibliographic records were cataloged system‐wide. Of these FTU headings, 100 were from fields used for author names (field 1xx, 7xx) in 80 bibliographic records. This represents a snapshot of FTU headings rather than a random sample but is typical of reports from this system. Issues addressed include FTU headings as errors; matching of bibliographic headings to existing authority records in the LC/NACO national file; and the need for NACO contribution when the heading has no supporting authority record.

Describes “first time use” headings in relation to bibliographic records cataloged (original or copy, language, etc.) and the match rate of about two‐thirds of the headings to existing authority records in the international LC/NACO authority file by the authorities processing vendor. This is a slight increase over time, assumed to be due to the growth of the NACO program. Approximately one‐third of the name headings are candidates for authority records via NACO.

The sample size was small but findings are similar to related research, for example regarding match rate of headings on bibliographic records to the LC/NACO authority file. However, there is no agreed‐upon benchmark with respect to this match rate. The questions remain about the need for all headings to have authority records and what constitutes a given catalog being “under authority control.”

Similar academic libraries likely can depend on authorities processing vendors to deliver matching name authority records for about two‐thirds of headings and also expect that approximately one‐third of name headings will lack authority records. If not a NACO participant, locally created authority records might be a choice. For NACO members, administrative decisions about workflow and authority record creation are needed. The resulting utility of the catalog, if matching authority records are included in the system, is a factor that should be considered.

This paper reports findings regarding authority records for name headings in relation to vendor processing of bibliographic records and subsequent catalog utility if matching authority records are founding the LC/NACO file and used in the system. The concept of establishing a benchmark for a satisfactory “match rate” of headings to existing authority records and for a catalog that may be said to be under authority control is raised.

By mapping-out the capabilities, challenges and limitations of named-entity recognition (NER), this article aims to synthesise the state of the art of NER in the context of the early modern research field and to inform discussions about the kind of resources, methods and directions that may be pursued to enrich the application of the technique going forward.

Through an extensive literature review, this article maps out the current capabilities, challenges and limitations of NER and establishes the state of the art of the technique in the context of the early modern, digitally augmented research field. It also presents a new case study of NER research undertaken by Enlightenment Architectures: Sir Hans Sloane's Catalogues of his Collections (2016–2021), a Leverhulme funded research project and collaboration between the British Museum and University College London, with contributing expertise from the British Library and the Natural History Museum.

Currently, it is not possible to benchmark the capabilities of NER as applied to documents of the early modern period. The authors also draw attention to the situated nature of authority files, and current conceptualisations of NER, leading them to the conclusion that more robust reporting and critical analysis of NER approaches and findings is required.

This article examines NER as applied to early modern textual sources, which are mostly studied by Humanists. As addressed in this article, detailed reporting of NER processes and outcomes is not necessarily valued by the disciplines of the Humanities, with the result that it can be difficult to locate relevant data and metrics in project outputs. The authors have tried to mitigate this by contacting projects discussed in this paper directly, to further verify the details they report here.

The authors suggest that a forum is needed where tools are evaluated according to community standards. Within the wider NER community, the MUC and ConLL corpora are used for such experimental set-ups and are accompanied by a conference series, and may be seen as a useful model for this. The ultimate nature of such a forum must be discussed with the whole research community of the early modern domain.

NER is an algorithmic intervention that transforms data according to certain rules-, patterns- or training data and ultimately affects how the authors interpret the results. The creation, use and promotion of algorithmic technologies like NER is not a neutral process, and neither is their output A more critical understanding of the role and impact of NER on early modern documents and research and focalization of some of the data- and human-centric aspects of NER routines that are currently overlooked are called for in this paper.

This article presents a state of the art snapshot of NER, its applications and potential, in the context of early modern research. It also seeks to inform discussions about the kinds of resources, methods and directions that may be pursued to enrich the application of NER going forward. It draws attention to the situated nature of authority files, and current conceptualisations of NER, and concludes that more robust reporting of NER approaches and findings are urgently required. The Appendix sets out a comprehensive summary of digital tools and resources surveyed in this article.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a modification of the Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) model to accommodate names in non-Roman languages with diverse writing systems.

The model modifies and clarifies the attributes and relationships regarding non-Roman languages of the current FRAD model, based on the definitions of transliteration, transcription, and Romanization in ISO 5127:2001. The modified model overcomes the problems inherent in the current FRAD model when handling writing systems in non-Roman languages.

The proposed model clearly shows the hierarchy of Controlled Access Points (CAPs). CAPs are either based directly on names or derived from other CAPs. For name or person identification, a CAP and its derivations should be treated as a set. The proposed model also resolves ambiguity in the definition of the word transliteration in the current FRAD model.

By establishing new relationships and amending the attributes of the FRAD model, the proposed model better expresses personal names in non-Roman languages as well as names in western languages. It also organizes complex writing systems of non-Roman languages. The proposed model could lead to an improved format for authority data and will facilitate international sharing of data.

A traditional model of name authority control (the Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO)) and the International Standard Author Number (ISAN), which was proposed in a previous article, are compared. This comparison is drawn in terms of the following criteria: input required during the standardisation of names; support for universal bibliographic control; promotion of collaboration between libraries and information services with regard to resource sharing and shared cataloguing; support for quality interaction between the user and information; saving of costs and time; and finally, the accommodation of future changes. Based on these results, the more effective method of the two is proposed for the standardisation of names.

This article describes a model for the standardisation of names in bibliographic databases. A prototype that was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of the model is described. Lastly, the impact of implementing this model is investigated. It was found that the new model will revolutionise name authority control. The literature supports such a change. It was also found that the prototype developed verifies the technical feasibility of its implementation.

Biographical data, including authorized name information, adds depth, richness and retrievability to bibliographic records and archival finding aids. The use of encoded archival description (EAD) has enabled the description of archival collections in fine detail. EAD allows for biographical information to be coded directly into finding aids in several ways. However the process is time consuming and may result in duplication of effort and inconsistency. This article presents the Nomen XML DTD for biographical data, and puts forth the idea that its use could simplify and enhance the encoding of biographical data in EAD. The Nomen DTD provides a record structure for encoding the authorized name, variant names and biographical details of a person or a group being associated with informational items as subjects or creators. The structure of the Nomen DTD is described in relation to the MARC21 name authority format followed by a discussion of how it may be used as a means to create an authority file for EAD biographical data encoding and linking.

Individual name searching has been identified as a problem for users when searching online and CDROM databases, particularly humanities databases. This paper reports results of a study which suggests that name authority files have the potential to improve retrieval during individual name searching.

The purpose of this paper is to collect and understand the nature of real cases of author name variants that have often appeared in bibliographic digital libraries (DLs) as a case study of the name authority control problem in DLs.

To find a sample of name variants across DLs (e.g. DBLP and ACM) and in a single DL (e.g. ACM), the approach is based on two bipartite matching algorithms: Maximum Weighted Bipartite Matching and Maximum Cardinality Bipartite Matching.

First, the authors validated the effectiveness and efficiency of the bipartite matching algorithms. The authors also studied the nature of real cases of author name variants that had been found across DLs (e.g. ACM, CiteSeer and DBLP) and in a single DL.

To the best of the authors knowledge, there is less research effort to understand the nature of author name variants shown in DLs. A thorough analysis can help focus research effort on real problems that arise when the authors perform duplicate detection methods.