[Dspace-general] Name Authority

[Dorothea Salo]

On 10/9/07, Hutchinson, Alvin <HUTCHINSONA at si.edu> wrote:
> Two questions regarding name authority:
>
> Some scholars believe that a name listed in a bibliographic entry should
> be entered exactly as it appears on the publication.

They don't do that when they cite in a subsequent publication; it's a
matter of journal style. Library catalogues don't do that with their
books; that's what name authority files are all about. I don't see why
scholars should expect to do that anywhere else. Ignore 'em, say I.

> However I feel like consistent retrieval of items by a particular author
> requires consistent naming. Any thoughts on this?

I agree; it's just a tremendous pain in the posterior to do and to
keep current. I'm looking at a name-authority project (if the Manakin
redesign doesn't kill me first) that's going to take *months*. The
last one I did -- on a much smaller repository -- took weeks.

Mind you, I was obsessive about finding full names, which in the
journal world is an inordinate hassle. If you're not, then authority
control reduces to figuring out which name representations belong
together, a much easier problem.

 Do you think any of
> the contributors to your repositories have a problem with normalizing or
> standardizing their name regardless of how it appears on the article
> they've published?

They might. They can argue with me if they want to. My money's on them
not arguing. I'm happy to explain the principle of collocation if I
have to.

> Also, does anyone have any scripts or codes (or advice) for replacing
> creator names in the dcvalue table of the DSpace database? I would
> imagine that an sql script along the lines of:
>
> "update dcvalue set text_value=Hutchinson, Alvin R. where
> text_value=Hutchinson, A.R."
>
> would be an adequate routine to standardize the name.

You'll want to fix the itemsbyauthor table as well, as you surmised.

update itemsbyauthor set author='Hutchinson, Alvin R.' where
author='Hutchinson, A.R.';

update itemsbyauthor set sort_author='hutchinson, alvin r.' where
sort_author='hutchinson, a.r.';

And then run an index_all.

Copying dspace-tech; apologies for duplication.

Dorothea

-- 
Dorothea Salo                dsalo at library.wisc.edu
Digital Repository Librarian      AIM: mindsatuw
University of Wisconsin
Rm 218, Memorial Library
(608) 262-5493