VIAF Council Meeting Minutes Hilton Lyon, Lyon, France

VIAF Council Meeting Minutes
Hilton Lyon, Lyon, France
Friday, August 15, 2014
Attendees
VIAF Council Institutions:
Edita Lichtenbergova (Czech Republic – National Library)
Ossama Mahmoud, Rania Osman (Egypt – Bibliotheca Alexandrina)
François Mistral (France – ABES)
Vincent Boulet, Françoise Bourdon, Pauline Chougnet, Gildas Illien (France – Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Brigitte Wiechmann, Lars Svenson (Germany – Deutsche Nationalbibliothek)
Tadahiko Oshiba (Japan – National Diet Library)
Stefanie Zutter (Luxembourg – National Library)
Mikolaj Baliszewski (Poland – National Library)
Leszek Śnieżko (Poland – NUKAT)
Ricardo Santos Muñoz (Spain – Biblioteca Nacional de España)
Miguel Moreira (Switzerland – RERO)
David Farneth (United States – Getty Research Institute)
Beacher Wiggins, Susan Morris (United States – Library of Congress)
Observers:
Pat Riva (Canada – Bibliothèque et Archives de Québec)
Cécile Davrieux-de Becdelièvre (France – Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon)
Jihae Jeon (Korea – National Library)
OCLC representatives:
Ted Fons, Janifer Gatenby, Thom Hickey, Boaz Nadav Manes, Glenn Patton, Richard Wallis, John DeSantis (OCLC
Global Council)
Welcome and Introductions
Brigitte Wiechmann, 2014 VIAF Council Chair, welcomed attendees and thanked OCLC for making
meeting arrangements.
Election of New Chair-Elect
The incoming chair for 2015 is Vincent Boulet (Bibliothèque nationale de France). He became the chair
following the Lyon meeting. Beacher Wiggins (Library of Congress) agreed to be nominated as chairelect and was unanimously elected. Beacher will serve as chair-elect in 2015 and as chair in 2016.
VIAF Update
Thom Hickey, Chief Scientist, OCLC Research, presented an update on the current status of VIAF. He
began by noting that the 2014 annual report was issued just prior to the Lyon meeting. His update first
emphasized infrastructure changes in the past year. He described xR records which grew out of OCLC
Research’s Multilingual Bibliographic Structure project which mines the bibliographic records in WC for
information related to works that have been translated. The mining process works with the most
complete records and is initially concentrating on works of fiction. At the time of the meeting, the
results of the work were available only in test but it became available in the production VIAF file in the
August 2014 update. Thom also described the related work with xRefine and the records that are
generated with “best guesses” about works, series, etc.
Thom reported on the VIAF relationship with ISNI. VIAF and ISNI representatives met earlier this year in
Paris to discuss ways of sharing information between the two databases. ISNI processing now considers
VIAF’s xA file. When the resulting “reviewed” ISNI records are shared with VIAF, the relationships
expressed in them are treated as if they came from the xA file and both merged and split VIAF clusters
can result.
Thom also reported on relationships with Wikipedia/WikiData. Wikipedia pages show both merges and
splits and OCLC is hoping to experiment with using that information to inform clusters.
In other changes related to clustering, Thom reported on gradual relaxation of the criteria for merging
clusters. The intent is to avoid small duplicate clusters that contain sparse records (those with only a
name and an ID) and duplicate records by moving them into an existing larger cluster. The intent is also
to avoid large duplicate clusters (caused by duplicate records for a single source or by differences in
pseudonym treatment). Statistics for the resulting changes are included in Thom’s slides.
Thom concluded his update with a diagram of interrelationships among various OCLC Research files and
OCLC production files.
Criteria for Joining VIAF
Following discussions during several conference calls over the past year, OCLC staff distributed a revised
version along with the agenda for the Lyon meeting. BnF colleagues provided comments a few days
before the meeting that focused on 1) giving more emphasis to stating the scope of VIAF; 2) putting
more emphasis on data quality as a criterion; and 3) explicitly broadening the range of potential
contributors to include LAMs (Libraries, Archives and Museums). The discussion touched on such
questions as whether there are fundamental differences in cataloging practices used by LAMs and
whether the document should be more explicit about who makes the final decision on an application.
OCLC staff agreed to consider these comments and questions and to produce another draft for council
consideration.
Expansion of VIAF
It was agreed that this agenda topic was adequately covered by the 2014 Annual Report.
Sending Undifferentiated Records to VIAF
Thom then used the final slide from his earlier update presentation to introduce the topic of including
undifferentiated name records in the VIAF file. Currently, processing of undifferentiated names is done
only for LC and DNB. These records have caused some problems in the past but they are better handled
now. They do cause some problems with clustering but the problems are not huge. Changes have been
made to insure that an undifferentiated record doesn’t pull clusters together and records now are
marked in displays. Brigitte Wiechmann described the history of how DNB undifferentiated records
came to be. No other libraries seem to be having problems with undifferentiated names.
Add to Records: Nationality – Profession
This agenda topic arose from a suggestion made at the VIAF/ISNI meeting earlier in the year. It seems
clear that the addition of information about nationality (i.e. the RDA element “Country Associated with
the Person”) and profession could be useful in clustering. The discussion touched on the following
points: would nationality involve the use of free text or a coding scheme such as ISO 3166; and are we
talking about true nationality versus country of residence? Several institutions reported on what is in
use in some of the files contained in VIAF. The DNB is using MARC 21 field 043 and ISO 3166 codes. The
BnF and ABES use UNIMARC field 102 and ISO 3166 codes. The Library and Archives Canada is using
standardized terms in MARC 21 field 670. It was agreed that Profession could also help, but use of it
raises the significant problem of language.
It was suggested that VIAF contributors be surveyed. A brief survey was posted to the VIAF-L list by
Brigitte Wiechmann on August 25, 2014, with responses requested by the end of September.
Quality Control in VIAF
Mixed Identities: Vincent Boulet discussed how to resolve mixed clusters and posed the question of
whether VIAF could send a notification to the institution whose record had caused an identity to
become confused? He also asked whether institutions would be willing and would have staffing to look
at problem cases. It was noted that one possible solution to resolve an incorrect cluster would be to
include the VIAF id of the cluster to which the incoming authority record should link. Thom agreed to
consider sending lists and asked whether reports should be done in clumps rather than as separate
reports for each problem. There was also discussion of Excel spreadsheets vs. HTML pages, with “.csv”
files as a compromise. It was also suggested that there should be a “best practices” document for
contributors. The work will be endorsed by the VIAF Council for 2014-2015.
Using Pre-alignment: Vincent also showed some examples and asked if VIAF could reuse “alignments”
made by VIAF contributors (based on record numbers contained in the record)? Thom responded that
VIAF processing should be doing this now if the numbers are present.
VIAF-ISNI interoperability
Janifer Gatenby gave an update on VIAF and ISNI synchronization. Included were examples of how the
kinds of reports that ISNI receives from users of their database results in data being passed along to VIAF
that assists in improving clusters. She also described how the ISNI Quality Team works to improve the
ISNI file. She also gave additional information about the VIAF/ISNI Interoperability Task Force and the
meeting held earlier this year. One attendee asked whether it is necessary to be an ISNI member to
have full use and benefit of the database. Janifer confirmed that it is.
Vincent Boulet then gave a complementary presentation which compares VIAF and ISNI and discusses
how libraries can benefit from both ISNI and VIAF. He concluded by urging that VIAF contributors and
other LAMs join both organizations.
Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon’s authorities and VIAF
The meeting attendees then welcomed Cécile Davrieux-de Becdelièvre of the Bibliothèque municipale
de Lyon for a presentation. After an introduction to the BmL and its collections and catalogs, Cécile
reported the results of research that she and her colleagues did to support the possibility of becoming a
VIAF contributor. They compared three sample sets (one of regional personal, family and corporate
names, a second of regional geographic names and a third “historical” set of names of former owners of
materials in the BmL’s collection). Their comparison indicated that more than 60% of the names are not
currently in VIAF and would therefore constitute a significant enrichment for the VIAF file. The BmL is
not able to participate in VIAF through ABES or as part of the BnF file.
Linked Data
Lars Svensson and Ted Fons reported on the satellite meeting, “Linked Data in Libraries: Let's make it
happen!” held at the BnF on August 14th. More information about the meeting, including the
presentations, can be found at http://ifla2014-satdata.bnf.fr/. Their summary described the 3 main
themes of the meeting: moving from records to entities; the need for reliable authority data
everywhere; and, the emerging group of vendors and service providers offering Linked Data services.
They also discussed the 2 tutorials that were part of the program: one for “beginner” beginners and a
second one for managers. Both Lars and Ted mentioned that VIAF had been mentioned frequently
during the day.
Ted then concluded the VIAF Council with a presentation on OCLC’s Linked Data strategy. He
emphasized the goals of improving access to libraries’ collections via the web and of improving the
efficiency and effectiveness of library workflows. He also described OCLC staff’s efforts to model the
data that is of interest to the web, to extract relevant data and to express that data in structures that
are familiar to the web.
Wrap-up
Brigitte Wiechmann thanked attendees and was in turn thanked by them for her service as VIAF Council
Chair.
Notes prepared by Glenn Patton