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About Web NDL Authorities


1. Overview of the Service

Web NDL Authorities is a service by the National Diet Library (NDL), Japan, to access authority data created and maintained by the NDL.

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2. What is Authority Data?

NDL maintains bibliographic data, such as title or author, to facilitate users’access to relevant resources. Preferred Names/Titles of persons, corporate bodies and works, and subject headings or other extra information are recorded in the bibliographic data to distinguish different people with the same name or to identify people who use pseudonyms, nonstandard spellings, transliterated names, or other variants.
”Authority data” is organized to indicate alternative Names/Titles, synonyms, and other extra information with the index of the preferred Name/Title.

Example of the correspondence between a particular author’s name and their variant name spellings
Author Spellings Name / Title
シェークスピア

シェイクスピア

シェークスピヤ

シェイクスピア, ウィリアム

沙士比阿

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Authority data for the Name/Title “Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616”
Type of Authority Personal Name
Name / Title Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616
Variant Name(s) / Title(s) シェークスピア
シェクスピア
シェイクスピア
シェイクスピア, ウィリアム
沙士比阿
Source マクベス

For more information about data items, please refer to “Help>Table 2. List of Detail Information Screen Item list”.

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3. The Scope of Provision and Standards for Creation of Authority Data

All of the authority data the NDL currently maintains is available on the Web NDL Authorities. Specifically, “Personal Name”, “Family Name”, “Corporate Body Name”, “Geographic Name”, “Uniform Title”, “Work”, “Topical Term”, “Genre/Form Term” and “Subdivision” used under the subject headings are available. Subject authorities also include “Subjects Headings with Subdivisions” in its scope of provision.

Authority data is divided roughly into “Authority File for Authors”, “Authority File for Works”, “Subject Authority File” and “Authority File for Genre/Form Terms”. The same Authority File is used for Authors and Subjects for personal names, corporate body names, and geographical names corresponding to countries and administrative units. Also, the same Authority File is used for Works and Uniform Titles.

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4. Modification of Authority Data

For information on the modification of personal name authority data within the Web NDL Authorities, please see the “Creation and Modification of Bibliographic Data”(in Japanese).

5. Notes

When using the Web NDL Authorities, please see the “Using Web NDL Authorities, Terms of Use ” to check the term and conditions of use.

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