Variation in Personal Names in Works Represented in the Catalog

Recent research suggests that many authority records might be unnecessary in online systems with sophisticated programming. One problem in determining which names can be used without full authority records and the references they provide is that there has been little study of the names themselves, and patterns of variation are unknown. In a random sample of persons with entries in the University of Chicago library general catalog, more than 80% had names appearing in only one form in all works. The study also catagorizes the differences among the forms of those names that do appear in more than one way.