Pilot national name & factual authority service
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This project investigated requirements for a name authority service for UK repositories. Prototype name authority software has been developed as part of this work and a number of connections have been made with UK stakeholders and with international projects working in a similar space.
Executive Summary
Prototype development
The prototype has been developed using an iterative approach due to the shifting nature of requirements and exploratory findings. An initial software requirements specification was derived using the outcomes of the requirements gathering phase, followed by design and development work which has been running in parallel, with input from external developers and stakeholders helping shape its course.
Initial prototype work has focused on several main areas.
- A database has been created, required to store name authority records, based on the entities defined in the Data Analysis and Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) mappings outcomes
- A back-end data collection and disambiguation application is under ongoing development, to acquire data from a variety of sources and identify unique entities within them with which to populate the database
- A web interface is under ongoing development, working with external partners, to provide machine to machine access to the database, with the creation of an API to provide easy, standardised, flexible querying of the service
- A web-based human search interface has been developed to allow human searching of the names records, and also aid in testing of the prototype
- A client script has been developed in conjunction with Cranfield University, to prototype automated methods of externally retrieving data from the Names service for use in other applications
All of the above work is still ongoing.
Stakeholder engagement
The name authority area is of interest in a number of different domains, some of which are actively working on solutions to the reliable identification of individuals and institutions. During the project’s lifetime the project team have been in contact with UK funding councils and name authority service developers from Australia, New Zealand and the USA, as well as the UK repository community (which is the principal target audience for this project).