Representação e recuperação de nomes de pessoas em catálogos de autoridades

Abstract

Objective: evaluate the functional resources of authority catalogs regarding the representation and retrieval of names of people, as well as the existence or not of a pattern in the form of description of personal names in the analyzed catalogs. Methods: This is a study with a qualitative approach, with an applied purpose and a descriptive-exploratory method, which is part of a master's project in the area of Information Science. The methodological procedures of the research were divided into two stages of execution. In the first phase of the research, nine databases and catalogs of authorities were selected for global structural and functional analysis. In the second phase, the catalogs of authorities from the Federal Senate, the National Library of Brazil and the Virtual International Authority File were selected for a more detailed and comparative assessment, especially in relation to the form of representation and the resources for recovering of personal names. Conclusions: the three authority catalogs evaluated in the second phase of the study do not present significant inconsistencies related to the control of person name authorities, as occurs in the other databases analyzed in the first phase. Results: The study contributes to the development and improvement of technical requirements in catalogs of institutional authorities or, still, for those users who need to use the catalogs analyzed in this study as a source of information, as it presents the available information search and retrieval resources and their functionalities practices, as well as the inconsistencies caused by the lack of these resources.