Record or network – knowledge representation tools for building personal name spaces based on data gained from computerised catalogues. The name space: a new concept and an old solution

Abstract

When managing the catalogues and registries of libraries and museums, it is raised again and again how important it is to unify and maintain authority files, especially the files of names of persons. Experience shows that the currently used data model based on MARC records can adequately meet the name space-related needs of an institution. At the same time, it is perceived that databases organised into ever growing units set such challenges against the system that the need arises for a changeover from traditional, record-based data structure to semantic knowledge representation. The growing integration of databases and this changeover from the record-based approach to the semantic web is, however, associated with a number of difficulties and raises interesting questions.