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Agreed, for contemporary persons. But the number of VIAF-related WP articles is relatively small, as I recall - a few tens of thousands? Where we can link them up, though, WP Infoboxes/WikiData can provide a lot of usable information. But it's a drop in the bucket since most people and organizations in the library authority files are not going to meet Wikipedia's guidelines for notability (as you know from AfD*). kc * "Articles for Deletion" where wikipedians argue about whether an article meets the criteria of the requirements for inclusion. Those criteria are not met by most authors or academics. On 8/26/15 6:56 PM, Stuart Yeates wrote: > > For those VIAF records which are linked to Wikipedia articles, VIAF > reliably includes dates of death. > > > In my experience, one of the most reliably-added pieces of information > in Wikipedia biographies is death dates. > > > cheers > > stuart > > > -- > I have a new phone number: 04 463 5692 > https://www.facebook.com/VUWLibrary / https://www.facebook.com/TKMPC > <https://www.facebook.com/TKMPC> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum > <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> > *Sent:* Thursday, 27 August 2015 1:26 p.m. > *To:* [log in to unmask] > *Subject:* Re: [BIBFRAME] BIBFRAME Identifier, Role, and Authority > Proposals > > > On 8/26/15 3:17 PM, Thomas Berger wrote: >> LC records may be lacking explicit (especially death) dates, but >> they usually contain a wealth of textual references which more often >> than not reveal exact birth dates and other important contextual >> information (affiliations, notable works, places of birth, death >> and activity). > You say "usually," but I see "occasionally." As an example, here's the > LC authority record for me: > http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n89613425.marcxml.xml, and if you > can find "other important contextual information" you are a better > reader than I am. Plus, when that information is available it's in a > note field and can be quite cryptic: > > "found:Phone call to Curbstone Press, 07-13-94(Michael H. Cooper is a > pseudonym of Michael Clark; b. 6-11-51; res. in Alaska)" > "found:Message from J. Baker, 11/08/88(Michael D. Cooper; b. 10/30/41) " > > Thomas, I think you are being overly optimistic about the state of > authority data today. I agree that it can get better, but I don't > agree that VIAF extracts much "data" -- it basically gets what you can > get from a MARC name heading field, and adds in titles of works (which > it gets from the WorldCat database). There may be more information in > non-US authority files, but rather than relying on impressions it > would be better to have a good study of available data. > > kc > -- > Karen Coyle > [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net > m: +1-510-435-8234 > skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600 -- Karen Coyle [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net m: +1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600