Crossing Silos: Assessing the Utility of Identity Attributes in Name Reconciliation

abstract: Even as librarians have spent the past twenty years documenting the rich world of scholarly communication beyond the catalog, repositories and catalogs too often remain completely siloed from each other. Current practices and tools to unite the two focus entirely on matching names, an imprecise method requiring substantial time spent on review. This article presents results of an experiment incorporating the attribute and citation data present in Library of Congress Name Authority Records and local faculty database records into the process of authority reconciliation. Adding tests for employer affiliation, educational history, and academic department produced improved, highly accurate match results.