The Standardisation of Names to Improve Quality and Co-operation in the Development of Bibliographic Databases

The need for an authority list of South African names to ensure standardisation of these names on a national level has been expressed on various occasions. This paper investigates the need to standardise South African names to eliminate one of the main obstacles to co-operation and to the delivery of quality products and services in South Africa. Problems experienced with the standardisation of South African names were identified by means of a sample of names obtained from the South African National Bibliography (SANB) database. These problems can be categorised as variations in the presentation of the same name, identical names for different authors and the changing of personal and corporate names. The implications these hold for standardisation of South African names are also discussed.