Encoding People

LiC uses the Library of Congress Name Authority File as the standardized vocabulary for names of people. To locate a place referenced in your text in the LCNAF, look it up here: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names.html.

Note that this authority includes historical personages primarily, but some very well-known fictional characters are also represented. An author may reference persons with alternative spellings of their names, and disambiguation is often necessary (which Darwin—Erasmus or Charles?). You will likely need to do some general Internet research to help you ensure you’re looking for the right person. The string of numbers in the “identifier” column is the unique identifier for that person (for Mary Shelley, it is n79061063. Clicking into the name you’re interested in will give more information.

In your XML, you’ll need to encode the person named with the appropriate tags, as follows:

<author> <persName type="lcnaf" key="n79061063"> <forename>Mary</forename> <surname>Shelley</surname> </persName> </author>

[…] under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown <persName type="lcnaf" key="n80043375">Agrippa</persName> aside, and, with my imagination warmed as it was, should probably have applied myself to the more rational theory of chemistry which has resulted from modern discoveries.[…] Once a sufficient number of persons have been encoded, you will want to update the linked data connections.