Use of Authorities Open Data in the ARROW Rights Infrastructure

Abstract

The ARROW rights infrastructure provides the means to support mass digitisation projects by finding automated ways to clear the rights situation of books to be digitised. ARROW provides seamless interoperability across a distributed network of national data sources, which contain essential information for determining the rights status of works, including national bibliographies from national libraries, books-in-print databases, and rights-holders databases. This paper presents how open data about authors, from the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is being used in ARROW to support the data interoperability across ARROW data sources, and how it is being used for the outputs of the rights clearance process.