University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno’s involvement in the WNAF project was a valuable exercise for us to consider our own vocabularies and how they can function across geographically distant collections. We provided a list of names used in our Oral History Archives with the intent to discover if our some of our Nevada-centric names would match names found in other Western repositories. The number was surprisingly low, but we were happy to provide unique names for the database, anyway. We hope to use the WNAF to enhance our cataloging resources as we tackle unique collections donated by important western political and cultural figures.
University of Oregon
The University of Oregon Libraries will continue to contribute personal name authorities to the Western Name Authority File project as new digital collections cataloging occurs. Collections with a regional emphasis will be prioritized for inclusion in WNAF.
For the initial phase of the project, we submitted names in JSON-LD, but for future we will use the webform for submissions or send the information for the personal names in a structured spreadsheet for easy batching into the Omeka S website. The future API for reconciling with the current WNAF authorities will be useful for de-duplication or relationship enhancement of local personal names.
We are working to integrate digital collections cataloging of special collections and archival materials with the NACO workflow at UO Libraries. With this workflow, we will integrate the creation of personal name authorities with our institutional NACO contributions, our local controlled vocabulary manager (opqauenamespace.org), and WNAF. We will especially be utilizing the NACO workflows for metadata librarians and students that were created for the WNAF project.
Utah State University
Utah State University Libraries plan to utilize the WNAF database in a similar fashion to LCNAF. Due to the high percentage of very local names in our digital collections, we will be checking the construction of our headings against available authorized forms in the WNAF. If none exist there, we plan to submit them through outlined procedures to help grow the database. We will also be using this process in constructing and verifying names in our EAD guides, as there is considerable overlap between these two discovery points. We are just starting to talk about possible ways to incorporate URIs into both of these schemas, but this will take additional consideration and planning with other MWDL and/or ArchivesWest consortium members to ensure that we remain compliant with standards and consistent with our regional practices.