Personal name identification in the practice of digital repositories

As early as the late 1990s, it was recognised that “names are as important in a digital library as an ISBN number is in a traditional library” (Cleveland 1998). In an ideal situation, personal names are as able to identify digital objects uniquely as they are to identify people. In the real world, however, names are sometimes not unique enough to handle identifications for digital objects. This inability inevitably affects the quality of information retrieval, citation analysis, linking of objects and copyright management.