York University Libraries is a part of the NACO Program. This allows the libraries to contribute authority records to the Library of Congress. The Libraries have taken this opportunity to highlight York community authors and to surface and celebrate authorship from our diverse archival holdings.
About the NACO Program
NACO (Name Authority Cooperative Program) is collaborative program by which participants contribute by creating and modifying authority records for personal, corporate and jurisdictional names, as well as uniform titles and series titles to the Library of Congress Authority File. The Library of Congress is the National Library of the United States and a globally recognized source for authority files. Name authorities are significant as they identify creators, locations, or series and are used to differentiate between similar names.
As information becomes more readily available on the web, the need for structured authority format is imperative. Structured authority entries include a Unique Resource Identifier (URI) that ensures global recognition of the entry and therefore increases discoverability on the web. NACO authorities are submitted to VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) for assignment of a URI. VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) is a global authority file that creates unique resource identifiers (URI) for using in structured web data. Library of Congress Authority File is a subset of the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).