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.
- In addition to being able to search authority data via “keyword search”, “classification number search” and “authority ID search”, you can search for the relevant bibliographic data in collaboration with NDL Search.
- For information about how to search and the screens, please refer to “Help”.
- For information about how to search for relevant bibliographic data in collaboration with NDL Search, and differences form search results when you use NDL Search advanced search screen, please refer to ”典拠データを使った資料検索：Web NDL Authoritiesガイド (How to Use Web NDL Authorities)“ (in Japanese) (link to NDL website).
- For information about the function of reference via a URI, download, or RSS feed, please refer to “Description of Functions”.
- Web NDL Authorities conforms to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, and is searchable via SPARQL.
Also, Web NDL Authorities is technically based on the Semantic Web, which assigns semantically clear data to information resources on the Web.
- For information about the data model, please refer to “About the RDF Model”.
- For information about how to search via SPARQL, please refer to “Web NDL Authorities SPARQL API Specifications 2018-03-31(PDF: 341KB)“.
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.
| 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 |
| 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”.
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.
- For information on how to choose and form personal names and corporate body names, please refer to the “Access Points“.
- For guidelines on subject heading creation and assignment, please refer to the “National Diet Library Subject Cataloging Manual” (in Japanese).
- For guidelines on Genre/Form Terms creation and assignment, please refer to the “National Diet Library Genre/Form Terms Cataloging Manual” (in Japanese).
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.