Hi Patrick,
Over the last few weeks I've been doing something very similar. I was able
to figure out a process that works using OpenRefine. It works by searching
the VIAF API first, limiting results to anything that is a corporate name
and has an LC source authority. OpenRefine then extracts the LCCN and puts
that through the LCNAF API that OCLC has to get the name. I had to use
VIAF for the initial name search because for some reason the LCNAF API
doesn't really handle corporate names as search terms very well, but works
with the LCCN just fine (there is the possibility that I'm just doing
something wrong, and if that's the case, anyone on the list can feel free
to correct me). In the end, you get the LC name authority that corresponds
to your search term and a link to the authority on the LC Authorities
website.
Anyway, The process is fairly simple to run (just prepare an Excel
spreadsheet and paste JSON commands into OpenRefine). The only reservation
is that I don't think it will run all 40,000 of your names at once. I've
been using it to run 300-400 names at a time. That said, I'd be happy to
share what I did with you if you'd like to try it out. I have some
instructions written up in a Word doc, and the JSON script is in a text
file, so just email me off list and I can send them to you.
Matt
Matt Carruthers
Metadata Projects Librarian
University of Michigan
734-615-5047
[log in to unmask]
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 7:03 PM, Karen Hanson <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I found the WorldCat Identities API useful for an institution name
> disambiguation project that I worked on a few years ago, though my goal
> wasn't to confirm whether names mapped to LCNAF. The API response includes
> a LCCN, and you can set it to fuzzy or exact matching, but you would need
> to write a script to pass each term in and process the results:
>
> http://oclc.org/developer/develop/web-services/worldcat-identities.en.html
>
> I also can't speak to whether all LC Name Authorities are represented, so
> there may be a chance of some false negatives.
>
> OCLC has another API, but not sure if it covers corporate names:
> https://platform.worldcat.org/api-explorer/LCNAF
>
> I suspect there are others on the list that know more about the inner
> workings of these APIs if this might be an option for you... :)
>
> Karen
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Ethan Gruber
> Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 3:54 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Reconciling corporate names?
>
> I would check with the developers of SNAC (
> http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/), as they've spent a lot of time
> developing named entity recognition scripts for personal and corporate
> names. They might have something you can reuse.
>
> Ethan
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Galligan, Patrick <[log in to unmask]
> >
> wrote:
>
> > I'm looking to reconcile about 40,000 corporate names against LCNAF to
> > see whether they are authorized strings or not, but I'm drawing a
> > blank about how to get it done.
> >
> > I've used http://freeyourmetadata.org/ for reconciling subject
> > headings before, but I can't get it to work for LCNAF. Has anyone had
> > any experience in a project like this? I'd love to hear some ideas for
> > automatically dealing with a large data set like this that we did not
> > create and do not know how the names were created.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > -Patrick Galligan
> >
>
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