Linked Open Data in the NDE UI
This page describes the Linked Open Data functionality in the NDE UI. For information about this functionality in the Original UI, see Searching Linked Open Data - Person Entity.
Introduction
Primo VE uses Linked Open Data (LOD), which is structured data that utilizes Web technologies to link related information, to enable users to discover additional information regarding an entity and to relate it to materials provided by your library. The information about each entity is taken from the Library of Congress, VIAF vocabularies, and Wikidata.
At present, the NDE UI supports this feature for one type of entity: a person. In upcoming releases, support for location and organization entities will be added.
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Changes to Library of Congress (LC) information take ~1 week to appear in Primo VE.
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New and updated Wikidata pages take 1-2 days to appear in Primo VE.
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In the September release, support for other languages was added. The data displayed for a person is displayed in the current UI language. In non-English languages, the person's name also appears in English, in addition to appearing in the UI language (when available). Other than for the name, we do not mix English in with other languages. If data does not exist in the UI language, nothing aside from the name in English is displayed. Nonetheless, note that the description from Wikipedia is currently only displayed in English (even in non-English UIs); this will be changed in the November release.
For information regarding authority linking in Alma, see Working with Authority Records.
Person Information Sources
The sources of the Person entity information are the Library of Congress Names Authority (LCNAMES), the following VIAF vocabularies, and Wikidata: GND, BARE, NLI, LCNAMES, NTA, TWNAF, EMBNE, IDREF, CANTIC, FRBNF, FAST, CZENAS, and NUKAT. For additional information, see Alma's Linked Data Enrichment Configuration.
Whether your preferred vocabulary is LCNAMES or another vocabulary supported in VIAF, the starting point is always the LC ID. If the information exists in your preferred vocabulary, it is used. Otherwise, it is taken from LC and then Wikidata. The description on the Person Page is based on Wikipedia, as is the picture of the person, when one is available. Hovering over the 
icon on the picture displays copyright information for it.
The Library of Congress and Wikidata person-related information is updated on our servers once a week. This means that materials removed by LC or Wikidata (for any reason) are automatically removed from the Person index within a reasonable time after the originating site makes the change.
The match between LC and Wikidata is based on the Identifier property. In LC, it is the LC ID (taken from 010 a, z), and in Wikidata, it is the LC authority ID. We use the LCNAME identifier in Wikidata to match the LC data. We do not add Wikidata authors if they do not exist in LC.
| Person Property | LC Field | Wikidata Property |
|---|---|---|
|
Person Name |
100 a,q,c,d |
|
|
Identifier |
010 a,z |
Library of Congress authority ID (P244) |
|
Birth date |
046 f |
date of birth (P569) |
|
Birth place |
370 a |
place of birth (P19), country (P17) |
|
Death date |
046 g |
date of death (P570) |
|
Death place |
370 b |
place of death (P20), country (P17) |
|
Variants (see from tracing—Personal Name) |
400 a |
|
|
Link to Wikidata |
024 1 |
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:EntityData/{id}.json |
|
Field of activity |
372 a |
field of work (P101) |
|
Occupation |
374 a |
occupation (P106) |
|
Short description |
N/A |
descriptions > "en" > value |
|
Link to image |
N/A |
image (P18) Supported formats: GIF, JPG, PNG Note that TIF/TIFF is not supported. |
|
Link to Wikipedia |
N/A |
sitelinks > "enwiki" > url |
|
IdRef ID |
N/A |
IdRef ID (P269) |
|
GND ID |
N/A |
GND ID (P227) |
Discovery of Person Entities
The UI includes the following elements to enable discovery of person entities:
- Autocomplete Person Entity – Suggestions of person entities related to terms the user enters into a search query
- Person Info Card – Brief information about person entities related to a record open in the Full Display page
- Person Page – More detailed information about a person presented in a dedicated page
Autocomplete Person Entity
Person entity suggestions are provided for search terms entered for simple and advanced searches. These suggestions appear at the bottom of the autocomplete list, below the suggestions used to return results from the library catalog. Up to two suggestions may appear, and, when available, they include the name, birth (and death) years, and a short description of the person. The two suggestions are the highest ranked suggestions identified by the system, as explained under Ranking Logic, below. Selecting one of these suggestions opens the associated Person Page.
Ranking Logic
Autocomplete for the person entity utilizes Elastic's function_score query functionality, which calculates a score based on the field values returned from records in the initial query's results. More specifically, several fields are indexed and leveraged during query time. The following fields are currently leveraged to generate values for these fields:
| Existing Field | Indexed Field | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| occupations | occupations_cnt | number (total count * 0.7) |
Emphasis is put on the occupations and field of work fields. |
|
field_of_work |
field_of_work_cnt | ||
|
variants |
variants_cnt | number (total count * 0.2) |
Counts for 'variants' have been discounted slightly since a large number of variants can negatively affect ranking. For example, Robyn William has many variants, but it appeared for names such as Waters Charles. |
|
short_description |
has_description | boolean (value of 3.5 if true) | |
|
image_info.link_to_image |
has_image_info | boolean (value of 3 if true) | |
|
link_to_wikidata |
has_link_to_wikidata | boolean (value of 2.5 if true) | |
|
link_to_wikipedia |
has_link_to_wikipedia | boolean (value of 2 if true) |
For example, a query for queen elizabeth returns several person entities including Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Elizabeth II has more variants and less occupations than Prince Philip, but the original query has a higher score due to variants being included in the original scoring which results in its final score being higher. In addition, the existence of both a description and an image gives more weight to a result that has only links to Wikidata or Wikipedia.
Person Info Cards
Person Info Cards appear on the Full Display page in the Related Entities section of the Recommendations panel. A card showing the same brief description that would appear in an autocomplete suggestion is displayed for each person entity that is associated with the record. Selecting the person's name in a card opens the Person Page.
The order of the cards in the Related Entities section is based on the following priority: 1) Creator, 2) Contributor, and 3) Subject. In the following example, the book is linked with the author and the person about which the book was written.
Selecting the 
icon in a card opens additional information about the person in a pop-up. (This information is also displayed in the Person Page.)
Up to three entities can appear in the Related Entities section. If more than three entities are associated with the record, a More related entities option appears below the Info Cards. Selecting this option opens the full list of related entities in a sliding panel. Up to 40 entities can be included in the list in this panel.
Person Page
The Person Page is a dedicated page that displays a person's information in the current UI language. If the current UI language is not English, the person's name appears both in English and in the current UI language. Wikipedia information is taken from the Wikipedia in the current UI language.
At present, Wikipedia information is displayed in English regardless of the current UI language. Support for Wikipedia in other languages will be added in upcoming releases.
In addition, this page includes the following sections, which link to bibliographic records that are connected to LCNAMES authority headings:
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Titles in Library Written by Person – Returns all bibliographic records where the person LC ID appears as a creator or contributor. This section is limited to a maximum of 25 records and is sorted by date.
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Titles in Library Written about Person – Returns all bibliographic records where the person LC ID appears as a subject. This section is limited to a maximum of 25 records and is sorted by date.
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People Associated with Person – From those matching bibliographic records, all other person entities that appear as a creator, contributor, or subject with a person LC ID are returned. In case of many related persons, the list is ordered by the most bibliographic records that are shared with the person. This section is limited to a maximum of 40 persons.
Configuration Options
This functionality is disabled by default and is configured at the institution level. Refer to the following table to enable this functionality and to configure related options.
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
|
Discovery Customer Settings page (Configuration > Discovery > Other > Customer Settings) |
The following parameters enable related-entity discovery for all views:
If you want to enable this functionality differently per view, set the above parameters to false and set their respective parameters to true on the View Configuration page. For additional information, see Discovery Customer Settings. |
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View Configuration page (Configuration > Discovery > Display Configuration > Configure Views) |
The following parameters enable related-entity discovery per view:
For additional information, see Configuring Discovery Views for Primo VE. |
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Person Entity Labels code table (Configuration > Discovery > Display Configuration > Labels) |
The following labels codes are used in the related-entity display (Entity Info Cards and Entity pages):
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Aria Labels code table (Configuration > Discovery > Display Configuration > Labels) |
The following codes support accessibility for the Person page:
The following codes support accessibility for the Person Info Card:
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Analytics - Entity Pages Events
User interactions with this functionality can be tracked as Entity Pages events. For example, you can use it to learn about which autocomplete suggestions for entities were selected by users, or under what circumstances users expanded or collapsed the Info Card section of the Recommendations panel. For information about the supported properties of Entity Pages events, see Mixpanel Events and Properties for the NDE UI.