Hi Eric,

What distinguishes one from another?

The communities behind them, the [often overlapping] communities they
are intended to serve, and the technical implementation.

As a librarian, why should I care?

I would, as a non-librarian, suggest that once you are happy with
the ‘authority’ of them, you shouldn’t have to care. Ideally, we are not
there yet, systems should be flexible and accommodating enough to link to
any appropriate authority.

I will probably get flamed for over generalisation here but - VIAF is
an aggregation of National Libraries Authority files.  - ISNI is a more
publisher focused but similar effort.  - OCID comes from and and tries to
serve individual academic institutions, their researchers and falsity
authors.


          authority control |simple identifier |Linked Data capability
         +-----------------+------------------+--------------+
  VIAF   |        X        |    X             |      X       |
         +-----------------+------------------+--------------+
  ORCID  |                 |     X            |              |
         +-----------------+------------------+--------------+
   ISNI  |        X        |     X            |    X         |
         +-----------------+------------------+--------------+

~Richard


On 20 June 2014 15:42, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Jun 20, 2014, at 10:31 AM, Richard Wallis <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > ISNI has a suite of programs that detects pseudonyms coded as name
> variants
> > and changes them into related name and generates related identity
> records.
> > It is a while since it was run and will be re-run in the next few weeks.
> > This should change Currer Bell into a related name of Charlotte Brontë .
>
>
> Please humor me as I ask this question again. What is the difference
> between ISNI and other identifiers systems (like ORCID, etc.)? What
> distinguishes one from another? As a librarian, why should I care? Was as a
> faculty member/scholar, why should I care? Under what context is one
> identifier expected to be used instead of another? Maybe a picture/graph is
> in order:
>
>           authority control simple pointer
>          +-----------------+--------------+
>   VIAF   |        X        |              |
>          +-----------------+--------------+
>   ORCID  |                 |     X        |
>          +-----------------+--------------+
>    ISNI  |                 |              |
>          +-----------------+--------------+
>
> —
> Eric Lease Morgan
>



-- 
Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Tel: +44 (0)7767 886 005

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