The Mint is an authority control / vocabulary server designed to supply authority services to repositories. It is designed to be a practical tool for working towards Linked Data repositories, making it easy build high-quality metadata collection and discovery system.
8. RSPCA name: Wayne At the vet: Bootsy Sefton Local council: Bootsy Sefton ID 555-888-888 RSPCA ID: 555-555-555 (owner <name-withheld>) RDFID tag: 555-777-777 At the park: Bootsy
It's not just parties that have multiple IDs. Take this example of the range of ways different IRs in Australian Unis fill out the resource type in OAI-PMH.
Parties typically have multiple id's issued by multiple parties. We have to accept this and work with it - and try to provide matching services where we can (within the limits of privacy legislattion).
Not really. But
TBL's linked data was practical advice about how to start building the semantic web. If you stop and think for too long you can end up paralysed by complexity, whether or not such and such URI is for or about the dog - but the bottom line is if people cant copy and paste from their browser or have the system assign URIs for them in the background then we will not build the semantic web.
I wanted to note that while we build data cleansing features into the Mint from the beginning, these were the hardest for our partner university to make happen. Library staff need to fight for IT resources, and getting the library resources to do data cleaning lined up takes time an commitment.
The team built a name matching system which can import data from the IR and match it against authoritative people-records from the research office system. It uses simple text searches in Solr/Lucene to find publications that might be by a particular researcher, but a human has to inspect every record. There is a similar system developed i Australia called NicNames but it does not have the import and export or APIs needed for The Mint.