I had the opportunity to participate in an IMLS-funded forum looking at how we might take local name authorities into a much more collaborative and networked environment. This is a theme that is showing up in many discussions about managing names and identities in the emerging environment, and connects to developments in biography and digital humanities as well as discovery environments. The problem is both complex and important.

Here is the announcement of the results from the national strategy forum.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI

Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the outputs of the IMLS-funded National Strategy for Shareable Local Name Authorities National Forum (SLNA-NF). The SLNA-NF project brought together colleagues from a wide range of stakeholder communities for a series of in-person and virtual meetings to discuss issues surrounding creation, maintenance and sharing of local name authorities and entities. The white paper and reference model examine these issues, including workflows, minimum viable specifications, reconciliation as a service and data provider obligations.

White paper: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/56343 Reference model: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/56582

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [LG-73-16-0040-16]

On behalf of the SLNA-NF participants (https://confluence.cornell.edu/x/N44kF)