Others have made excellent contributions to this thread, which I won't 
repeat, but I feel it's worth asking the question:

Who is systematically cross walking these identifiers?

The only party I'm aware of doing this in a large-scale fashion is 
Wikipedia, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Authority_control

cheers
stuart


On 06/05/2014 06:34 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> ORDID and ResearcherID and Scopus, oh my!
>
> It is just me, or are there an increasing number of unique identifiers popping up in Library Land? A person can now be identified with any one of a number of URIs such as:
>
>    * ORCID - http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9952-7800
>    * ResearcherID - http://www.researcherid.com/rid/F-2062-2014
>    * Scopus - http://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.url?authorId=25944695600
>    * VIAF - http://viaf.org/viaf/26290254
>    * LC - http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n94036700
>    * ISNI - http://isni.org/isni/0000000035290715
>
> At least these identifiers are (for the most part) “cool”.
>
> I have a new-to-me hammer, and these identifiers can play a nice role in linked data. For example:
>
>    @prefix dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/> .
>    <http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/07378831211213201> dc:creator
>      "http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9952-7800" ,
>      "http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n94036700" ,
>      "http://isni.org/isni/0000000035290715" ,
>      "http://viaf.org/viaf/26290254" .
>
> How have any of y’all used theses sorts of identifiers, and what problems do you think you will be able to solve by doing so? For example, I know of a couple of instances where these sort of identifiers are being put into MARC records.
>
> —
> Eric Morgan
>