Author identity management in the book chain

Out of a series of posts reporting back from conversations on transitioning to the next generation of metadata in Spain, this one focuses on author identification in the trade book supply chain (A Spanish translation is available here). To kick off the session, Andrew MacEwan gave an update on the British Library’s collaboration with publishers in the UK to promote use of ISNI identifiers in the upstream supply chain. This triggered a fruitful discussion in which the participants of the round table agreed that author identity management is a crucial part of the metadata supply chain of trade books. The main take-away was a raised awareness of the role ISNI can play to eliminate duplication and automate the process.