Disambiguation and Authority Sources
Two people share a name. Two organizations share an abbreviation. Every identity system in your stack (HR, directory, ticketing, the lot) spells the same human three different ways. Disambiguation is how compliance data says this one, not that one. The mechanism GRCSchema.org uses for it is the AuthoritySource Thing in the Shared vocabulary. That registry entry is the authoritative definition. This page is the commentary.
The pattern: when an entity has been disambiguated, its record points at the authority source's record that vouches for it. An AuthoritySource carries its name, abbreviation, and URL. The pointer carries the @id and elementId of the record within that source. Nobody's identity system is asked to change anything. Each source keeps its own records, in its own format, under its own name, and GRCSchema data simply cites them.1
The authority sources
For people's and organizations' names, the deepest well is the international library system. Each of these maintains Authority Source Records2 for names and publications:
| BAV | Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana |
|---|---|
| BNE | Biblioteca Nacional de España |
| BNF | Bibliothèque Nationale de France |
| DNB | Deutsche Nationalbibliothek |
| EGAXA | Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt) |
| GRCS | GRCSchema.org federated repository |
| ICCU | Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico |
| JPG | Getty Research Institute |
| LC | Library of Congress/NACO |
| LAC | Library and Archives Canada |
| NKC | National Library of the Czech Republic |
| NLA | National Library of Australia |
| NLIara | National Library of Israel (Arabic) |
| NLIcyr | National Library of Israel (Cyrillic) |
| NLIheb | National Library of Israel (Hebrew) |
| NLIlat | National Library of Israel (Latin) |
| NUKAT | The National Union Catalog of Poland |
| OCLC | Online Computer Library Center |
| PTBNP | Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal |
| SELIBR | National Library of Sweden |
| SWNL | Swiss National Library |
| VIAF | Virtual International Authority File |
And beyond the libraries, the persistent-identifier registries the compliance and research worlds already trust:
| GLEIF | Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (LEI, ISO 17442) – legal entities |
|---|---|
| ORCID | Open Researcher and Contributor ID – people |
| ROR | Research Organization Registry – research organizations |
| ISNI | International Standard Name Identifier – people and organizations |
Any of these can be registered as an AuthoritySource. So can your own systems: an HR system or directory server that vouches for an identity is an authority source for that identity, with a smaller jurisdiction.
Footnotes
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"The Babel fish is a small, bright yellow fish, which can be placed in someone's ear in order for them to be able to hear any language translated into their first language." Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Translation, not conquest: that's the whole design. ↩
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Authority Source Records are MARC21 or Unimarc Name Authority records that have been processed for improved uniformity. ↩