Breaking the Bottleneck: Automating the Reconciliation of Named Entities to the Library of Congress Name Authority File

Abstract

At the University of Michigan Libraries, we have developed an intuitive, straight-forward process for automating the reconciliation of named entities against the Library of Congress Name Authority File. Using OpenRefine and stable, publicly available APIs, the process automatically searches the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) for matches to personal and corporate names, looks for a Library of Congress source authority record in the matching VIAF cluster, and extracts the authorized heading. The end result is a dataset, exportable from OpenRefine, with the corresponding authorized LCNAF heading paired with the original name heading, along with a link to the authority record on lccn.loc.gov. This process is automated and requires no programming knowledge or support from developers. Using this process, we have been able to reduce the time taken to reconcile name headings drastically.

In this presentation, we will lead attendees through the quick and easily generalizable process, and explain what is happening behind the scenes. We will also discuss the impact it has had on our local workflows, the limitations of the process, and detail how attendees can use this process themselves to aid in their authority control processes.