n. (abbr. VIAF)an international project which aggregates name authority files from member institutions into one public databaseGueguen et al. 2013, 574The OCLC Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is making millions of authority file “clusters” available as [Linked Open Data]. Wikipedia articles about people are systematically being linked to VIAF records for the same people, and a subset of Wikipedia is also being exposed as LOD in DBpedia.Schaefer and Bunde 2013, 67Contained within our 1,846 EAD records were more than 6,000 encoded names (80 percent personal names) and 716 biographical or historical notes. . . . Not only could we leverage this data to authorize names, but we were able to “link” many of them with external services, such as OCLC’s Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), with the help of Google Refine . . .Meissner 2019, 38Archival description can interoperate with other information systems without any loss of meaning. For example, biographical information from archival descriptions can be imported into shared online authority files like OCLC’s Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).VIAF 2025The VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) combines multiple name authority files into a single OCLC-hosted name authority service. The goal of the service is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking widely-used authority files and making that information available on the Web.OCLC 2025The VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) service provides libraries and library users with convenient access to the world's major name authority files. VIAF Contributors regularly supply authority data that VIAF matches, links, and groups. All descriptions for a given entity are merged into a cluster that brings together the different names for that entity. This service allows researchers to identify names, locations, works, and expressions while preserving regional preferences for language, spelling, and script.
Notes
The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) was founded in 2003 as the VIAF Consortium by the United States Library of Congress (LC), the German National Library (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, or DNB) and OCLC. In 2012, VIAF was transitioned to become an OCLC service.
