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Introduced. 6 August 2003. ( 2003-08-06) Example. 106965171. Website. viaf .org. The Virtual International Authority File ( VIAF) is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC).
From an identifier: This is a redirect from a unique (alpha-)numerical identifier (like an EAN) to an article discussing that particular class of identifiers in mainspace. By convention the redirect must include the parenthetical disambiguator "(identifier)".
Authority control is a way of associating a unique identifier to articles on Wikipedia. This is useful to disambiguate different items with similar or identical headings, as well as establish a single standard title for an item that is commonly known by two or more titles. When used, authority control data links can be found near the bottom of ...
The primary purpose of authority control records is to help distinguish between people with the same (or similar) names. As such, identifiers are usually not matched on the name alone; the software is able to take account of other information such as birth and death dates. I wrote a new biographical article, how do find the VIAF identifier ...
Where an interwiki to the German Wikipedia exists, we can pull the identifier from the linked page, doing some basic metadata checks to ensure the interwiki linkage is accurate. Around 145,000 articles on the German Wikipedia currently have VIAF identifiers; the rest use other identities, but it may be practical to match them to VIAF.
WP:VIAF. Authority control is a method used to assign a unique identifier to each topic, which, like Wikipedia's own disambiguation process and redirects, is critical for subjects that either have the same name but refer to different topics, like differentiating between John Smith (professor) and John Smith (English poet), or have different ...
The VIAF® (Virtual International Authority File) combines multiple name authority files into a single OCLC-hosted name authority service. The goal of the service is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking widely-used authority files and making that information available on the Web.
