Authority control

An authority file is a directory of standardized terms for use as a descriptor in the documentation. A standard file is thus a form of controlled vocabulary in which it is determined which is heading to be used in development. In English, authority files are referred to as "authority files". Standardized terms may be personal names, corporate names, and any other amounts of names of things, processes or abstract concepts. The formation of standard terms is based on an ontology, which determines the respective normalizing terms and to the type of normalization. The standard terms are after the award to the metadata of each data set.

As a preform can apply the free allocation of categories, key words or tags that but adheres to certain rules, such as the commitment to singular or plural, the preferred use of components etc.

Examples

Known standard files are the common authority file (GND ), which is supervised by the German National Library, the Library of Congress Name Authorities File ( LCNAF ) and the Système universitaire de documentation ( SUDOC ) of the French union catalog.

In the project Virtual International Authority File ( VIAF ), the GND and other authority files are associated with personal names on a concordance to a virtual international authority file.