party identifiers

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Party IdentifiersFX Nuttall a & Sam G. Oh ba International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers(CISAC) , Paris, Franceb Department of Library & Information Science , SungkyunkwanUniversity , Seoul, KoreaPublished online: 14 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: FX Nuttall & Sam G. Oh (2011) Party Identifiers, Cataloging & ClassificationQuarterly, 49:6, 528-537, DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2011.603075

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Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 49:528–537, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0163-9374 print / 1544-4554 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01639374.2011.603075

Party Identifiers

FX NUTTALLInternational Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), Paris, France

SAM G. OHDepartment of Library & Information Science, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, Korea

As Digital Media develops into a mature market, the proper refer-encing of digital content is increasingly critical. The Identificationof Parties who contributes to content is key to ensure efficient discov-ery services and royalty tracking. Far from being simple numbers,Party Identifiers such as International Standard Name Identifiers(ISNI) are built on rigorous structures meeting the requirements ofdiverse media such as books, music or films. Designed to accuratelyidentify Natural Persons and Legal Entities alike, Party Identifiersmust also support language variances, cultural diversity and strin-gent data privacy regulations.

KEYWORDS party identifiers, ISNI, rights management, discoveryservices, data privacy, contributors, authors

INTRODUCTION

Scope

In today’s information society, proper identifications of parties constitute acritical social and commercial component. While Party Identifiers cover avast domain, this article will focus on Party Identifiers only in the context ofdigital media. Digital media are all cultural and academic resources that areavailable on the Internet such as books, films, music, newspapers, or scien-tific publications. Parties are usually defined as any entities interacting withcultural and academic resources. They may include authors, publishers, per-formers, actors, or even readers and listeners. Parties are sometimes referred

Received June 2011; accepted July 2011.Address correspondence to Sam G. Oh, Department of Library & Information Science,

Sungkyunkwan University, 53 Myeongnyun-dong 3-ga, Jongno-gu, Seoul 110-745, Republicof Korea. E-mail: [email protected]

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Party Identifiers 529

to as entities or contributors. This article will not address party identificationschemes that are tied to more institutional domains such as the social securitynumbers or passport numbers, which are useful in governmental affairs.

History

Ever since the creation of the World Wide Web, the exploitation of digitalmedia has seen an exponential growth. Most of that growth is now availablein digital form. But for that to be useful, the contents must be referenced,archived, structured, and documented. Requirements for such referencingand documenting have been driven, to a large extent, by the need for searchand discovery services as well as the need for management of intellectualproperties.

Consequently it is altogether possible to search resources by the nameof one of their contributors (e.g., “I want a book written by Arthur Clarke” or“I am looking for a film by Alfred Hitchcock”). Yet, strangely enough, thereis yet to be a unified or standardized method for the designation of Parties.

Parties are mostly referred to by their names, or more precisely, bythe string of characters representing their names. Some industry sectors useProprietary Party Identifiers for back-office purposes such as royalty man-agement, but there are no cross-industry, universal solutions.

In recent years a group of institutions and companies that representsvarious industry sectors began coalescing to create international party iden-tifiers, International Standard Name Identifiers (ISNI),1 under the auspices ofthe International Standard Organization (ISO). Efforts to produce an interna-tional agreement are a logical and necessary movement in light of the factthat identifications of parties have long been compromised by unreliable andheterogeneous processes.

THE GENERIC ARCHITECTURE OF PARTY IDENTIFIERS

Descriptive metadata pertaining to a Party may be peculiar in nature. Dateof birth, bank account references, or race, for instance, are highly sensitivepieces of information that need to be preserved and maintained, but mustnot be disclosed too openly.

Most, if not all, party identifiers carry a similar dual layer structure:(a) A private layer containing sensitive information and a (b) public layercontaining a minimum of disambiguation metadata (Figure 1).

While Private Layers hold well-guarded secrets, Public Layers hold in-formation that may be safely disclosed and shared. It is the combination ofthese two layers that determines the full functionality of a Party Identifier.

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530 F. X. Nuttall and S. G. Oh

FIGURE 1 Architecture of a Party Identifier (color figure available online).

Different Party Identifiers serve different purposes. ISNI, for instance,only provides the Public Layer and thus provides a high level of interop-erability. The Interested Party Identifier, IPI,2 on the other hand, has bothlayers—the IPI base number acting as the Private Layer and the IPI namenumber acting as the Public Layer—and its level of interoperability dropsaccordingly.

TYPES OF PARTIES

There are different types of parties, each having its own characteristics.

Natural Persons

A Natural Person is an individual (i.e., a physical person). Depending onthe usage of the identification scheme, a Natural Person can have manycharacteristics or descriptive metadata elements.

The first and foremost characteristic of a Natural Person is the Name.Names are composite elements as they are made of multiple building blocks(i.e., Civility + First name + Last name). Culture and/or region are factorslikely to determine the structure of a Name. In North America most individ-uals carry a middle name, and their single last names may or may not befollowed by a Roman numeral (e.g., William H. Gates III). In Arabic coun-tries many people use multiple last names; in Germany names are frequentlypreceded by a title such as “Dr.” or “Professor.” The structure of ISNI, whichis “Prefix–First Name–Middle Name–Last name–Suffix,” is suitable to addressalmost all cultural and regional variances of Names, and is accompanied byan extensive guideline for usage. The abbreviated civilities (e.g., Mr., HRM,Dr.) are also normalized within the ISNI Standard.

An individual may have more than one name. A formal name thatcan appear on his/her passport is a patronymic name; all other names are

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pseudonyms (e.g., Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of William Dodgson). Formost Party Identifiers, each pseudonym of a person is assigned a uniquenumber, and all names of that person are linked together in the process.

Then there are a number of variances around a name whose examplesmay include, but are not limited to, the following:

• William Shakespear and William Shakespeare are alternative spellings ofthe same public identity.

• e. e. cummings and E. E. Cummings are alternative presentations of thesame public identity.

• Gunter Graß, Guenter Grass, and Guenter Graß are character set variancesof the same public identity.

• Ciaikovsky, Pjotr Iljc, and are transliteration vari-ances of the same public identity.

• Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Peter Tchaikovsky are linguistic variances of thesame public identity.

Additional descriptive metadata are often necessary to differentiate be-tween two homonyms. Date and place of birth provide a good disam-biguation mechanism despite their vulnerability to data privacy issues. Manyindividuals by the name of Will Smith do exist, for instance, yet it is reason-able to assume that they share neither the same specific date of birth nor thesame specific place of birth. In addition, date and place of birth are constantand permanent data elements unaffected by time. Any number of other dataelements may also be employed depending on the usage of a Party Identi-fier. Contractual data (e.g., membership information) and financial data (e.g.,bank references or accounting information) are examples of such elements.

It is worthwhile to note that, in digital media context, physical descrip-tions such as height or hair color seldom play a role in metadata elements fora number of reasons. They are (a) non-persistent (i.e., people may change instature or have their hair dyed at times), (b) susceptible to complex privacyissues, and therefore (c) generally not very useful.

Groups of Natural Persons

Groups of Natural Persons are usually music bands such as rock bands ororchestras. They call for a different method of descriptions from NaturalPersons. Even though Groups of Natural Persons are also typically identifiedby their names, Group Names, in general, are simpler than Natural PersonsNames.

Nonetheless, as with the case of Natural Persons, homonyms are com-mon occurrences. There are, for instance, more than ten rock bands called“Bliss.” Additional metadata elements may help to differentiate between two

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homonyms of Natural Persons Names but all carry their own level of fuzzi-ness.

Band membership is a promising, yet non-permanent element, so adynamic metadata record is required for its reconstruction. A list of resourcesto which specific groups have contributed can be used as well despite thedifficulties in securing an exhaustive list. Creation (and/or Dissolution) datesmay also prove useful when available.

Legal Entities

Examples of Legal Entities are companies, organizations, or institutions. LegalEntities are often used to distinguish the publisher of a book or the producerof a movie.

Legal Entities also involve a specific set of metadata elements: name,date of incorporation, postal address, affiliation, and role. Name is preferablythe registered name, although commercial names are frequently used. Postaladdress disambiguates two companies with identical names. Affiliation showsownerships such as the subsidiaries of other companies, while role definesactivity sectors.

Fictional Characters

Fictional Characters are defined as Virtual Legal Persons, and are useful forsearch and discovery services. Fictional Characters carry similar descriptivemetadata elements as Legal Persons.

USE CASES OF PARTY IDENTIFIERS

Party Identifiers are applicable or even necessary in a number of businessenvironments or processes. The core function of a Party Identifier is essen-tially the same in all applications. It is to establish with absolute accuracy theidentity of a party, though different requirements lead to different structuresor different data sets.

Search and Discovery

In this application users explore a domain pertaining to an identified party.Examples of this category may be: “What films have been directed by FrancisFord Coppola?” or “What books has Umberto Eco written?”

This business case brings two requirements on the Party Identifier: (a)It must be linked to one or more Resource Databases. It is one thing toknow that Coppola is a movie director, but there also needs to be a moviedatabase using the Party Identifier and (b) The search bears little contractual

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requirement. One can therefore use a “thin” Identifier such as ISNI or onlythe private layer of a Structured Identifier such as the IPI.

Rights Management

Rights management is a critical business concern as it governs how financialtransactions are controlled. It is used in commercial processes to maintainuser accounts or royalty payments.

It is imperative to employ a fully structured, two-layer identifier such asthe IPI or the IPN3 in this context. The Public Layer is what identifies andtracks down the user throughout a given transaction while the private layeris what accesses critical information such as the membership or accountingdata.

Referencing

Every library in the world has a mandate to reference all the resources itcarries, including their contributors. While books, journals, and magazinesmay form the majority of these resources, cultural goods such as musicsheets, sound recordings, or movies are equally valuable resources.

Homonyms and pseudonyms pose common challenges in referencingprocesses, but further complexities arise in cross-referencing (i.e., when dif-ferent reference databases are connected or merged). The Virtual Interna-tional Authority File, VIAF,4 is the ultimate cross-referencing database that ismaintained by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. It references over10 million names and 8.4 million cross-references.

For instance, the VIAF establishes an authoritative link between thefollowing records:

• Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904• ЧexOB, AHTOH �aBлOBич, 1860–1904• 1860–1904• 1860-1904

This cross-referencing function allows systems and users all around theworld to automatically and reliably connect to one another.

RELATIONSHIPS

The previously mentioned use cases are possible through the adoption ofParty Identifiers, and more specifically by the authoritative relationships ofParty Identifiers with other Identifiers.

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A single search can retrieve all the Works of a Contributor, regardless ofthe type of Media or where it is stored. An illustrative example is “Madonna”who is a Performer, a Producer, an Actor, a movie Director as well as anAuthor. Exploring the Works of Madonna requires a search across multipledomains and multiple databases. It becomes possible only by the implemen-tation of Relationships between content and Parties throughout all industrysectors.

Also, filtering searches to a given Party while carving out all itshomonyms is a key feature, given that there are over 139 different authorscalled “Michael Jackson” or 10 different music bands called “Bliss.”

In-Between Party Identifiers

Until recently almost every Industry Sector, if not every Industry Player, hadits own Party Identifier, making it all proprietary and not at all interoperable.This was due to the fact that Party-related information carries a lot of sensitivedata such as birth dates, personal contact information, contractual clauses,or commercial terms. Information sharing in this context may have graveimplications and repercussions.

The following illustrates how the paradigm has changed by ISNI.

ISNI: A Bridge Identifier

The Initial requirement for the ISNI Identifier was born when the mediaindustry needed to streamline its business processes for the emerging onlinemarket.

For rights management purposes, Musical Authors were referenced byan IPI and Perfomers were referenced by an IPN.

Concurrently, those same Performers and Composers used the VIAFidentifers for referencing purposes in libraries around the world. Cross link-ing all these identifiers meant that sensitive data would be exposed and thata different link had to be established for each type of Identifier, making theprocess tediously redundant.

The most elegant solution is to consider the proprietary identifiers asa Private Layer operating in individual silos. On top of this private layer,an open public layer is built using ISNI as a cross identifier. Confidentialityremains intact and no modifications of existing IT systems are necessary.

Figure 2 shows a case when an Author (IPI) needs to be cross-referencedto a Performer (IPN); it is simply achieved by exchanging ISNI Identifiers.The same ISNI would also serve to exchange information with the libraries’databases.

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FIGURE 2 ISNI as a Bridge Identifier (color figure available online).

As more sectors adopt ISNI, thus adding new nodes to the private layer,ISNI will easily scale up and provide full interoperability across all industries.

With Other Identifiers

Party Identifiers need to be linked not only to each other, but also to allMedia Resources.

With decades of persistent efforts, ISO TC46/SC9 has defined Identifiersfor every media type, books, periodicals, music, movies, e-books, and so on.

All SC9 Identifiers carry a Party Descriptor, but not necessarily a PartyIdentifier. ISBN was designed in 1970 when the necessity of a unique iden-tifier for the Author or the Publisher of a book was not yet on the horizon.

ISO’s directive on SC9 Identifiers to carry a Party Identifier is a recentlyimposed mandate. Within five years, all SC9 Identifiers are expected to al-low for the inclusion of a Party Identifier. Then and only then will the fullcapabilities of Party Identification be made available to all systems and usersinvolved in the Digital Media value chain.

DATA PRIVACY AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES

A critical feature of Party Identification is its legal implications. In mostcountries, aggregation of private data within a database is highly scrutinized.

To be usable in an international environment, the descriptive elementsof Parties must be kept to a strict minimum (i.e., when they are necessaryto disambiguate two Parties). For this reason, elements pertaining to raceor religion are not referenced. A few more elements that require carefulattention are explained below.

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Date of Birth, Date of Death

The dates of birth and death (or creation and dissolution for legal entities)are widely used as they provide, due to their permanence, a unique andreliable indication of the Party. Yet some countries (like Finland) prohibitpublic exposures or exportations of such information. In those few instances,work-arounds become necessities. It is possible either to argue that suchinformation is already a public knowledge (e.g., Jean Sibelius, the Finnishcomposer born on December 8, 1865), or to rely on alternative descriptiveelements (e.g., Jean Sibelius, the Finnish composer who wrote The Tempest).

Pseudonymous Relationships

Some writers and composers decide to publish different works under differ-ent names. It may be for artistic reasons (i.e., they do not want their notorietyto influence the public) or for commercial interests (i.e., they have an ex-clusive contract for all publications under a given name). In either case, itis strictly forbidden to expose the relationship between names of the sameindividual. Consequently, while some pseudonymous connections belong inthe public domain, as in “Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is Lewis Carroll,” someothers must continue to remain as well-guarded secrets.

Mandatory Declaration

In many, particularly European, countries, it is required by law that anydatabase that maintains information about individuals be declared to a gov-ernmental organization. Party Identification databases typically fall in thatcategory; anyone creating such a database is bound to a legal obligation todeclare it.

CONCLUSION

Proprietary Party Identifiers have long existed but remained in operationwithin silos. Consequently they triggered little exposure to the outside world.This all changed with recent technological introductions. The developmentof new cross-media products such as e-books and the mass deployment ofdigital products such as music downloads and Video on Demand (VOD)necessitate the creation of cross-industry international standards.

While it may seem trivial to describe an individual with a few metadataelements, this article has shown that the adoption of relevant standardswithin mainstream business processes requires careful attention to manycultural and legal complexities.

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NOTES

1. International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI), ISO 27729, http://www.isni.org/2. Interested Party Identifier (IPI), http://www.ipisystem.org/3. International Performer Number (IPN), http://www2.ipddb.org/content/ipd-project4. Virtual International Authority File (VIAF), http://viaf.org/

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