Re: [VuFind-General] Authority records?

[Andrew N. <and...@vi...>]

> > Just a general question for you all.  Right now from what I can tell,
> > VUFind doesn't really use authority records at all, just process the
> > MARC records and normalizes the author names.  Are there any plans on
> > changing this?  I don't see anything on the road map.   I actually
> > have a couple of reasons for asking.
>
>
> You are correct.  VuFind indexes MARC records in a general purpose
> fashion.  Currently, there is no integration with respect to authority
> records and I'm not aware of any plans to do so.  I suppose it might
> be possible to create a process of merging authority records with MARC
> records and perhaps use this information to create an authority-based
> author search.  However, I couldn't answer that question (right now,
> anyway).  Someone else on this list might have a better grasp on how
> this might be accomplished in our Voyager system.

Yes, and I would say the main reason is due to the fact that we do not use =
Authority records here at VU.  I would love to get someone to volunteer to =
improve VuFind to utilize authority control.  Any volunteers?

>
>
> >
> > Right now I'm on a consortium committee for CARLI that's getting a
> > chance to view  some of the excellent work Chris Delis (Hi Chris) has
> > done with VUFind.  But in playing  around it became clear that names
> > are just being normalized and leading to weird situations.  One of my
> > favorite examples is Michael Jackson.  There's actually several
> > writers that are named Michael Jackson, including a children book or
> > two by the actually famous Michael Jackson.  Searching right now
> lumps
> > them all together as one person and always shows the Wikipedia
> article
> > for the "King of Pop".
> >
> > When a person actually decides to look for books by an author, I've
> > notice they tend to actually like authority records.  It's true
> facets
> > might be able to help here, but in the case of looking for authors
> one
> > very dominate author can "hide" works by other authors.  Of course, I
> > haven't gotten too many people's reactions on the current system,
> > could be I'm making a mountain of a molehill.
> >
>
> Generally speaking, I tend to think of searches in two categories:
> general searches, where a user doesn't know exactly what he or she is
> looking for, e.g., a topic or subject search; and targeted searches,
> where a user knows more precisely what he or she is looking for, e.g.,
> a specific author or ISBN.  It may very well be that VuFind is more
> geared towards the former category.  However, I don't find it lacking
> too much in the latter, either.  If I wanted to find materials by a
> different Michael Jackson (not the pop star), how difficult is it to
> do this?  In our test environment of 1,000,000 bib records, an author
> search for Michael Jackson yields 14 results.  And you are correct to
> mention how facets can assist in this scenario.  If, say, I was
> interested in Michael Jackson, the author in the field of Social
> Science, I could simply narrow my search based on this subject
> category (in this particular case, it will narrow my search results to
> 1).  So, although I think you bring about a valid point in this
> discussion, I personally do not find it to be a "mountain" nor a
> "molehill."  Perhaps, it lies somewhere in between?  Maybe I'm just
> not understanding something (very possible :-).  Or maybe a different
> example will help me understand better?

I agree that it is not a major problem, because the facet options do help w=
ith this as you point out.  But lets say there are 2 people in a similar fi=
eld that publish with the same name.  Chances of that happening im sure are=
 rare - but probably do happen.

Also, if I were to search for Samuel Clemens - I should see (or it would be=
 nice) records where Mark Twain is listed as the author.

>
> Actually, in this example, I find that I-find (pun intended :-)
> simplifies my search.  Here are WebVoyage results for Michael Jackson,
> the author:
>
> http://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/uc/cgi-
> bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=3DJackson%2C+Michael&Search_Code=3DNAME_&CNT=
=3D2
> 0&HIST=3D1
>
> If I wanted materials in the field of Social Science, which one do I
> choose?

Yes, I don't think this solution is any good either.  Are you expecting a p=
oor freshman to know the birth year of the author they are looking for :)

>
>
> Up to now, I haven't addressed the Wikipedia ambiguities.  I agree
> that we should try to find a solution to this issue.  Have you figured
> out a way to reliably access Wikipedia's "disambiguation page"?  If we
> can do this, that might be a good solution (make the user pick).

Hmmmmmm.....


Lots of possiblities on improvement ... vufind needs more developers and mo=
re adoption to get these issues solved.  Join in the fight!

Andrew