-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Am 08.01.2014 16:51, schrieb Ethan Gruber:

> defining those entities in other authority systems, but there's almost no
> biographical context beyond this.  EAC means Encoded Archival Context.  The
> context part is where EAC-CPF has a real potential.

I think that is crucial: EAC-CPF descriptions fulfill a specific
task in the process of archival description and elaborate on
(the connection between a person/corporate body/family and)
specific holdings within a given project or institution.

Unlike library authority records it does not make much sense to
employ an unmodified copy of an EAC record stemming from other
contexts (for the same person, ..., of course). Therefore you
also cannot "merge" them to something of more "universal" utility.

Different descriptions pertaining to the same person in
different contexts have to be identified with each others,
but must remain separate entities. I too perceive certain
parallels to VIAF: The single authority records evolving
from Real Authority Files cannot simply be transcended into
some Uber-Authority - there are boundaries of language,
script, cataloguing code between the different cataloguing
communities which cannot be strechted beyond a certain
boundary without becoming an administrative nightmare -
imagine a dispute between a russian and a chinese cataloguer
about details of an arab heading in the context of AACR2...
And secondly to have sufficent "hard" biographical data like
in library authority records (forms of names, dates, places,
fields of activity) is crucial for identification purposes,
be it in VIAF or across archives.

IMHO the best one can do is associating EAC-CPF descriptions
with authority numbers of a suitable Real Authority File
(including the ability to modify or at least influence the
authority file), the second best would be to associate it
with VIAF numbers (no editing possible, only at smallest
scale. Thus even the hugest error over there has to be
tolerated indefinitly). In any case VIAF or VIAF-like
matching heuristics will have to be used when it comes to
building bridges between EAC-CPF repositories oriented towards
differing "identification framesets".

viele Gruesse
Thomas Berger


>> How is EAC-CPF intended to be similar or different from VIAF?
>>
>> —
>> Eric Morgan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/

iJwEAQECAAYFAlLNse8ACgkQYhMlmJ6W47PqkgP7BvQSNsYkMnve6W6jtckiMYFh
QbLqFsuGu6DMd6xgsYMg+j7537E/AzxImQmx51i7j3CiFEsFkqwOv3u6parexCok
3MPDpCiPXrRSIQ9ApP9V4kNxkhh+/ML6Dq3wcZAOr4Kp9o25JNH6sLGzMM/fMqrk
L6hm49+DYcQsJFmv790=
=6KDs
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----