Norwegian Artist Names Authority List of Artists in Norwegian Art Collections

How can one best transform a paper-based publication into a living online resource? This is the theme of a project at The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway, supported by the Arts Council Norway. The National Museum aims to create, publish and maintain an authority list of Norwegian artists, architects, designers and craftsmen. The objective is to ease the digitisation process for other museums, scholars and the public in general and contribute to better data quality in Norwegian online collections. The list will in part be based on the Norsk Kunstnerleksikon (Encyclopaedia of Norwegian Artists in English), published in 1982⁻1986 and subsequently digitised in 2013. With the help of other public collections in Norway, the purpose is to make the new resource as complete as possible and available in both human- and machine-readable formats. Although the original paper publication contains biographical texts as well as lists of exhibitions, education, travels, publications and more, the data in the new authority list will be constrained to a set of core biographical data. It will however carry references to online biographical resources such as Norsk Kunstnerleksikon (NKL), Wikidata, Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) and Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). This article discusses the process of defining the scope of and setting constraints for the list, how to enrich and reconcile existing data, as well as strategies to ensure that other institutions contribute both as content publishers and end users. It will also shed light on issues concerning keeping such a resource updated and maintained.