Reconciling the Harry Ransom Center's Name Authority File

For this project, I worked with the Harry Ransom Center's Name Authority File (HRCnaf) with the objectives of cleaning up local authorities from duplicates, standardizing preferred forms of the names following the developed RDA guidelines, and identifying undifferentiated or legacy names. This entailed reconciling preferred and variant names and linking URIs for data with external sources. According to the HRCnaf project charter, "While the HRC has a well-documented and structured Name Authority Database, data aggregations from several sources, the use of different descriptive standards, and the addition of new fields throughout the time has led to inconsistent or incomplete authority data" Thus, this project helped transform the HRC Name Authorities Database into an efficient access and discovery tool.