Virtual International Authority File - Wikipedia 

 Jump to content 

 Main menu 

 Main menu

 move to sidebar 
 hide 

 Navigation

 Main page 
 Contents 
 Current events 
 Random article 
 About Wikipedia 
 Contact us 

 Contribute

 Help 
 Learn to edit 
 Community portal 
 Recent changes 
 Upload file 
 Special pages 

 Search 

 Search 

 Appearance 

 Donate 

 Create account 

 Log in 

 Personal tools 

 Donate 

 Create account 

 Log in 

 Contents

 move to sidebar 
 hide 

 (Top)

 1 
 History 

 2 
 VIAF clusters 

 3 
 Participating libraries and organizations 

 Toggle Participating libraries and organizations subsection 

 3.1 
 Libraries added for testing purposes 

 4 
 See also 

 5 
 References 

 6 
 Sources 

 7 
 External links 

 Toggle the table of contents 

 Virtual International Authority File 

 76 languages 

 Afrikaans 
 العربية 
 مصرى 
 Asturianu 
 Azərbaycanca 
 Bikol Central 
 Беларуская (тарашкевіца) 
 Беларуская 
 Български 
 भोजपुरी 
 বাংলা 
 Bosanski 
 Català 
 Čeština 
 Cymraeg 
 Dansk 
 Deutsch 
 Zazaki 
 Ελληνικά 
 Esperanto 
 Español 
 Euskara 
 فارسی 
 Suomi 
 Français 
 Nordfriisk 
 Gàidhlig 
 Galego 
 עברית 
 हिन्दी 
 Hrvatski 
 Magyar 
 Հայերեն 
 Bahasa Indonesia 
 Igbo 
 Ilokano 
 Italiano 
 日本語 
 ქართული 
 한국어 
 Lëtzebuergesch 
 Ligure 
 Latviešu 
 Македонски 
 मराठी 
 Bahasa Melayu 
 Malti 
 Plattdüütsch 
 Nederlands 
 Norsk nynorsk 
 Norsk bokmål 
 Occitan 
 Polski 
 Português 
 Română 
 Русский 
 سنڌي 
 Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски 
 සිංහල 
 Simple English 
 Slovenčina 
 Slovenščina 
 Shqip 
 Српски / srpski 
 Svenska 
 తెలుగు 
 Tagalog 
 Türkçe 
 Українська 
 اردو 
 Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча 
 Vèneto 
 Tiếng Việt 
 吴语 
 閩南語 / Bân-lâm-gí 
 中文 

 Edit links 

 Article 

 Talk 

 English 

 Read 

 Edit 

 View history 

 Tools 

 Tools

 move to sidebar 
 hide 

 Actions

 Read 

 Edit 

 View history 

 General

 What links here 
 Related changes 
 Upload file 
 Permanent link 
 Page information 
 Cite this page 
 Get shortened URL 
 Switch to legacy parser 

 Print/export

 Download as PDF 
 Printable version 

 In other projects

 Wikimedia Commons 
 Wikidata item 

 Appearance

 move to sidebar 
 hide 

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 International authority file

 Virtual International Authority File 

 Acronym
 VIAF

 Organisation
 OCLC 

 Introduced
 6   August 2003 ; 23 years ago   ( 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, operated by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). [ 1 ] 

 History
 [ edit ] 

 Homepage in 2012 
 Discussions about having a joint international authority started in the late 1990s. After several failed attempts to develop a unique joint authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities. This would present all the benefits of a standard file without requiring a significant investment of time and expense in the process. [ 2 ] 

 The project was initiated by the American Library of Congress (LC), the German National Library (DNB), and the OCLC in April 1998 as a proof-of-concept that authority records can be linked. [ 3 ] After extensive testing, the VIAF consortium was formed at the 2003 World Library and Information Congress, hosted by the International Federation of Library Associations . [ 4 ] on 6 August 2003, [ 5 ] [ 6 ] and by September it had its own page at the OCLC website. [ 7 ] The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) joined the project on 5 October 2007.

 The project transitioned to being a service of OCLC on 4 April 2012. [ 8 ] 

 The aim is to link the national authority files (such as the German Integrated Authority File ) to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original documents, and refers to the original authority records. The data is made available online and is available for research and, data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) protocol.

 The file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata . [ 9 ] [ 10 ] 

 Christine L. Borgman groups VIAF with the International Standard Name Identifier and ORCID systems, describing all three as "loosely coordinated efforts to standardize name forms". [ 11 ] Borgman characterizes all three systems as attempts to solve the problem of author name disambiguation , which has grown in scale as the quantity of data multiplies. [ 11 ] She notes that VIAF, unlike the other two systems, is led by libraries, as opposed to individual authors or creators. [ 11 ] 

 VIAF clusters
 [ edit ] 

 VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month. As more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. [ 12 ] 

 Participating libraries and organizations
 [ edit ] 

 English Wikipedia entry name

 Identifier

 Native-language name

 Location

 Country/Region

 National Library of Argentina [ 13 ] 

 ARBABN

 Spanish : Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno 

 Buenos Aires 
 Argentina 

 Bibliotheca Alexandrina 

 EGAXA

 Arabic : مكتبة الإسكندرية 

 Alexandria 
 Egypt 

 Biblioteca Nacional de Chile 

 BNCHL

 Spanish : Biblioteca Nacional de Chile 

 Santiago 
 Chile 

 Biblioteca Nacional de España 

 BNE

 Spanish : Biblioteca Nacional de España 

 Madrid 
 Spain 

 Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal 

 PTBNP

 Portuguese : Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal 

 Lisbon 
 Portugal 

 Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec 

 B2Q

 French : Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec 

 Quebec 
 Canada 

 Bibliothèque nationale de France 

 BnF

 French : Bibliothèque nationale de France 

 Paris 
 France 

 National Library of Greece 

 ΕΒΕ

 Greek : Εθνική Βιβλιοθήκη της Ελλάδος 

 Athens 
 Greece 

 Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc (BNRM)

 MRBNR

 Arabic : المكتبة الوطنية للمملكة المغربية French : Bibliothèque nationale du Royaume du Maroc 

 Rabat 
 Morocco 

 Biografisch Portaal 

 BPN

 Dutch : Biografisch Portaal 

 The Hague 
 Netherlands 

 British Library 

 –

 London 
 England 

 Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces 

 Danish : Kulturstyrelsen 

 Copenhagen 
 Denmark 

 Danish Bibliographic Centre 

 DBC

 Danish : Dansk BiblioteksCenter 

 Ballerup 
 Denmark 

 German National Library (DNB)

 GND

 German : Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 

 Frankfurt 
 Germany 

 International Standard Name Identifier 

 ISNI

 –

 London 
 United Kingdom 

 Israel Museum 

 Hebrew : מוזיאון ישראל 

 Jerusalem 
 Israel 

 Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico 

 ICCU SBN

 Italian : Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico 

 Rome 
 Italy 

 Lebanese National Library 

 LNL

 Arabic : المكتبة الوطنية 

 Beirut 
 Lebanon 

 Library and Archives Canada 

 LAC

 French : Bibliothèque et Archives Canada 

 Ottawa , Ontario 
 Canada 

 Library of Congress NACO consortium (Name Authority Cooperative Program)

 LCCN

 –

 Washington, D.C. 
 United States 

 National and University Library in Zagreb 

 NSK

 Croatian : Nacionalna i sveučilišna knjižnica u Zagrebu 

 Zagreb 
 Croatia 

 National and University Library of Slovenia 

 Slovene : Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica 

 Ljubljana 
 Slovenia 

 National Central Library 

 NCL CYT

 Chinese : 國家圖書館 

 Taipei 
 Taiwan 

 National Diet Library 

 NDL

 Japanese : 国立国会図書館 

 Tokyo Kyoto 
 Japan 

 National Institute of Informatics 

 NII CiNii

 Japanese : 国立情報学研究所 

 Tokyo 
 Japan 

 National Library Board 

 NLB

 –

 –
 Singapore 

 National Library of Australia 

 NLA

 –

 Canberra 
 Australia 

 National Library of Brazil 

 BLBNB

 Portuguese : Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil 

 Rio de Janeiro 
 Brazil 

 National Library of Catalonia 

 BNC

 Catalan : Biblioteca de Catalunya 

 Barcelona 
 Spain 

 National Library of Estonia 

 ERRR

 Estonian : Eesti Rahvusraamatukogu 

 Tallinn 
 Estonia 

 National and University Library of Iceland (NULI)

 UIY

 Icelandic : Háskólabókasafn 

 Reykjavík 
 Iceland 

 National Library of Ireland 

 N6I

 Irish : Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann 

 Dublin 
 Ireland 

 National Library of Israel 

 NLI (deprecated) J9U

 Hebrew : הספרייה הלאומית 

 Jerusalem 
 Israel 

 National Library of Korea 

 KRNLK

 Korean : 국립중앙도서관 

 Seoul 
 Korea 

 National Library of Latvia 

 LNB

 Latvian : Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka 

 Riga 
 Latvia 

 National Library of Luxembourg 

 BNL

 Luxembourgish : Nationalbibliothéik Lëtzebuerg French : Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg 

 Luxembourg City 
 Luxembourg 

 National Library of Mexico 

 BNM

 Spanish : Biblioteca Nacional de México 

 Mexico City 
 Mexico 

 National Library of the Netherlands 

 NTA

 Dutch : Koninklijke Bibliotheek 

 The Hague 
 Netherlands 

 National Library of New Zealand 

 –

 Wellington 
 New Zealand 

 National Library of Norway 

 BIBSYS W2Z

 Norwegian : Nasjonalbiblioteket 

 Trondheim 
 Norway 

 National Library of Poland 

 NLP

 Polish : Biblioteka Narodowa 

 Warsaw 
 Poland 

 National Library of Russia 

 NLR

 Russian : Российская национальная библиотека 

 Saint Petersburg 
 Russia 

 National Library of Scotland 

 Scottish Gaelic : Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba Scots : Naitional Leebrar o Scotland 

 Edinburgh 
 Scotland 

 National Library of South Africa 

 Afrikaans : Staats-Bibliotheek der Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek 

 Cape Town Pretoria 
 South Africa 

 National Library of Sweden 

 SELIBR

 Swedish : Kungliga biblioteket - Sveriges nationalbibliotek 

 Stockholm 
 Sweden 

 National Library of Wales 

 Welsh : Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru 

 Aberystwyth 
 Wales 

 National Library of the Czech Republic 

 NKC

 Czech : Národní knihovna České republiky 

 Prague 
 Czech Republic 

 National Széchényi Library 

 NSZL

 Hungarian : Országos Széchényi Könyvtár 

 Budapest 
 Hungary 

 Perseus Project 

 PERSEUS

 –

 Medford, Massachusetts 
 United States 

 RERO (Library Network of Western Switzerland) 

 RERO

 German : Westschweizer Bibliothekverbund French : Réseau des bibliothèques de Suisse occidentale Italian : Rete delle bibliotheche della Svizzera occidentale 

 Martigny 
 Switzerland 

 Répertoire International des Sources Musicales 

 RISM

 –

 Frankfurt 
 Germany 

 Système universitaire de documentation 

 SUDOC

 French : Système universitaire de documentation 

 –
 France 

 Syriac Reference Portal 

 SRP

 –

 Nashville, Tennessee 
 United States 

 Swiss National Library 

 SWNL

 German : Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek French : Bibliothèque nationale suisse Italian : Biblioteca nazionale svizzera Romansh : Biblioteca naziunala svizra 

 Bern 
 Switzerland 

 Narodowy Uniwersalny Katalog Centralny, NUKAT   [ pl ] 

 NUKAT

 Polish : Narodowy Uniwersalny Katalog Centralny 

 –
 Poland 

 Union List of Artist Names – Getty Research Institute 

 ULAN JPG

 –

 Los Angeles , California 
 United States 

 United States National Agricultural Library 

 NALT

 –

 Beltsville, Maryland 

 United States 

 United States National Library of Medicine 

 –

 Bethesda, Maryland 
 United States 

 Vatican Library 

 BAV

 Latin : Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana 

 –
 Vatican City 

 Cultuurconnect ( Bibnet   [ nl ] and LOCUS)

 Digitale Bibliotheek Vlaanderen   [ nl ] 

 Brussels 
 Belgium 

 Wikidata [ citation needed ] 

 WKP

 –

 Berlin , Germany 
 International

 Libraries added for testing purposes
 [ edit ] 

 English Wikipedia entry name

 Identifier

 Native-language name

 Location

 Country

 Lithuanian National Library 

 LIH

 Lithuanian : Lietuvos nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo biblioteka 

 Vilnius 
 Lithuania 

 National and University Library of Slovenia / COBISS 

 SIMACOB

 Slovene : Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, NUK 

 Ljubljana 
 Slovenia 

 See also
 [ edit ] 

 Authority control 

 Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST)

 Integrated Authority File (GND)

 International Standard Authority Data Number (ISADN)

 International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI)

 Wikipedia's authority control template for articles 

 References
 [ edit ] 

 ↑ Kelley, Michael; Schwartz, Meredith (2012). "VIAF service transitions to OCLC". Library Journal . 137 (8). Media Source Inc. : 16.   

 ↑ O'Neill, Edward T. (12 August 2016). VIAF: Origins . Authority Data on the Web, a Satellite Meeting of the 2016 IFLA World Library and Information Congress . OCLC . Archived from the original (Video presentation) on 13 July 2018 – via YouTube. 

 ↑ "VIAF: Convenient access to name authority files" . OCLC . 20 December 2019. 

 ↑ Loesch, Martha Fallahay (28 February 2011). "The Virtual International Authority File". Technical Services Quarterly . 28 (2): 255– 256. doi : 10.1080/07317131.2011.546304 . ISSN   0731-7131 . S2CID   62694070 . 

 ↑ Morris, Susan R. (September 2003). "Virtual International Authority" . Library of Congress Information Bulletin . Library of Congress . Retrieved 5 January 2021 . 

 ↑ Agnew, Grace (2008). Digital Rights Management: A Librarian's Guide to Technology and Practise . Chandos Publishing . p.   180 . ISBN   978-1-84334-125-3 . OCLC   62715356 . 

 ↑ "Virtual international authority file [ OCLC - Projects ] " . 21 September 2003. Archived from the original on 21 September 2003. 

 ↑ Murphy, Bob (4 April 2012). "Virtual International Authority File service transitions to OCLC; contributing institutions continue to shape direction through VIAF Council" . OCLC (Press release). Dublin, OH . 

 ↑ Klein, Max; Renspie, Melissa (7 December 2012). "VIAFbot Edits 250,000 Wikipedia Articles to Reciprocate All Links from VIAF into Wikipedia" . OCLC . 

 ↑ Klein, Maximilian; Kyrios, Alex (14 October 2013). "VIAFbot and the Integration of Library Data on Wikipedia" . The Code4Lib Journal (22). ISSN   1940-5758 . 

 1 2 3 Borgman 2015 , p.   260. 

 ↑ Hickey, Thomas B.; Toves, Jenny A. (July 2014). "Managing Ambiguity In VIAF" . D-Lib Magazine . 20 (7/8). Corporation for National Research Initiatives . doi : 10.1045/july2014-hickey . 

 ↑ "ARABN - National Library of Argentina - VIAF Profile" . viaf.org . Retrieved 30 September 2023 . 

 Sources
 [ edit ] 

 Borgman, Christine L. (2015). Big Data, Little Data, No Data: Scholarship in the Networked World . MIT Press . ISBN   978-0-262-32786-2 . OCLC   900409008 . 

 External links
 [ edit ] 

 Wikimedia Commons has media related to VIAF .

 Wikidata has the property: 
 VIAF cluster ID (P214) (see uses )

 Official website 

 VIAF at OCLC 

 v 
 t 
 e 

 International numbering standards

 Standards

 ISO 2108: International Standard Book Number (ISBN)

 ISO 3297: International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

 ISO 3901: International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)

 ISO 6166: International Securities Identification Number (ISIN)

 ISO/IEC 7812 : Issuer Identification Number (IIN)

 ISO 9362 : Business Entity Identifier (BIC)

 ISO 10957: International Standard Music Number (ISMN)

 ISO 13616: International Bank Account Number (IBAN)

 ISO 15511: International Standard Identifier for Libraries... (ISIL)

 ISO 15706: International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN)

 ISO 15707: International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC)

 ISO 17316: International Standard Link Identifier (ISLI)

 ISO 17442: Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)

 ISO 21047: International Standard Text Code (ISTC)

 ISO 26324: Digital Object Identifier System (DOI)

 ISO 27729: International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI)

 ISO 27730: International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI)

 CAE / IPI 

 Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)

 Authority control databases 

 International
 WorldCat 

 Artists
 Dereales</span>"}]]}'> MusicBrainz 

 Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virtual_International_Authority_File&oldid=1360183187 "

 Categories : Identifiers 
 Library cataloging and classification 
 Library of Congress 
 OCLC 

 Hidden categories: Articles with short description 
 Short description is different from Wikidata 
 Use dmy dates from January 2021 
 Articles containing French-language text 
 Articles containing Spanish-language text 
 Articles containing Arabic-language text 
 Articles containing Portuguese-language text 
 Articles containing Greek-language text 
 Articles containing Dutch-language text 
 Articles containing Danish-language text 
 Articles containing German-language text 
 Articles containing Hebrew-language text 
 Articles containing Italian-language text 
 Articles containing Croatian-language text 
 Articles containing Slovene-language text 
 Articles containing Chinese-language text 
 Articles containing Japanese-language text 
 Articles containing Catalan-language text 
 Articles containing Estonian-language text 
 Articles containing Icelandic-language text 
 Articles containing Irish-language text 
 Articles containing Korean-language text 
 Articles containing Latvian-language text 
 Articles containing Luxembourgish-language text 
 Articles containing Norwegian-language text 
 Articles containing Polish-language text 
 Articles containing Russian-language text 
 Articles containing Scottish Gaelic-language text 
 Articles containing Scots-language text 
 Articles containing Afrikaans-language text 
 Articles containing Swedish-language text 
 Articles containing Welsh-language text 
 Articles containing Czech-language text 
 Articles containing Hungarian-language text 
 Articles containing Romansh-language text 
 Articles containing Latin-language text 
 All articles with unsourced statements 
 Articles with unsourced statements from November 2024 
 Articles containing Lithuanian-language text 
 Inconsistent wikidata for Commons category 

 This page was last edited on 19 June 2026, at 19:30  (UTC) .

 Page was rendered with Parsoid .

 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License ;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. , a non-profit organization.

 Privacy policy 

 About Wikipedia 

 Disclaimers 

 Contact Wikipedia 

 Legal & safety contacts 

 Code of Conduct 

 Developers 

 Statistics 

 Cookie statement 

 Mobile view 

 Search 

 Search 

 Toggle the table of contents 

 Virtual International Authority File 

 76 languages 

 Add topic