Authority Records Enhancement

A Guide for Administrators and Editors

What is it?

The AHG Authority plugin (ahgAuthorityPlugin) is a suite of enhancements for managing the quality and richness of your authority records (actors — people, organisations, families). It adds external identifier linking, a completeness dashboard, a relationship graph, merge/split and deduplication workflows, structured occupations and ISDF functions, a Named Entity Recognition (NER) pipeline, and enriched EAC-CPF export — all surfacing through an Authority Records admin section.

Key features

External identifier linking — link actors to Wikidata, VIAF, ULAN, and LCNAF, with search, save, and verification of each identifier. Stored in ahg_actor_identifier.
Completeness dashboard — scores how complete each authority record is and surfaces gaps, with recalculation per record and batch assignment, plus a completeness badge/panel on records.
Relationship graph — a visual graph of how an actor relates to other actors, driven by graph data for each authority record.
Merge & split workflow — preview and execute merges of duplicate authority records, and split conflated records apart, with a merge audit trail (ahg_actor_merge).
Bulk deduplication — scan the catalogue for likely duplicate actors, compare candidate pairs side by side, and dismiss or merge them.
NER-to-authority pipeline — turn named entities detected by the AI/NER tools into authority stubs (ahg_ner_authority_stub), then review, promote, or reject them.
Structured occupations — record occupations against an actor (ahg_actor_occupation).
ISDF functions — link actors to ISDF functions and browse functions (ahg_actor_function_link).
EAC-CPF export enrichment — export richer EAC-CPF for an actor, including the linked identifiers and structured data.
Contact panel — surface extended contact information for an actor.

How to use it

Open the Authority Records admin section (icon: ID card), or go directly to:

Dashboard: /admin/authority/dashboard — overview of authority quality.
Work queue: /admin/authority/workqueue — records needing attention.
Identifiers: /admin/authority/:actorId/identifiers — link/verify Wikidata, VIAF, ULAN, LCNAF.
Completeness: recalculate via /api/authority/completeness/:actorId/recalc; the badge/panel appears on the record.
Relationship graph: /api/authority/graph/:actorId powers the graph panel.
Merge / split: /admin/authority/merge/:id and /admin/authority/split/:id.
Deduplication: /admin/authority/dedup, scan at /admin/authority/dedup/scan, compare at /admin/authority/dedup/compare/:id.
NER pipeline: /admin/authority/ner-pipeline to review, promote, or reject entity stubs.
Occupations: /admin/authority/:actorId/occupations.
Functions: /admin/authority/:actorId/functions and browse at /admin/authority/functions/browse.
Contact: /admin/authority/:actorId/contact.
EAC-CPF export: /api/authority/eac-cpf/:actorId.

Administration / settings

Configuration: /admin/authority/config (administrator only) — settings stored in ahg_authority_config.
CLI tasks: scheduled/maintenance tasks include a completeness scan, deduplication scan, NER pipeline run, function sync, and a merge report.
Optional integrations: works better alongside ahgDedupePlugin, ahgAIPlugin, ahgRicExplorerPlugin, ahgWorkflowPlugin, ahgContactPlugin, ahgExportPlugin, and ahgFunctionManagePlugin when those are enabled. Requires ahgActorManagePlugin.

Tips & FAQ

Where do duplicates come from? Bulk imports and OCR/NER ingestion often create near-duplicate actors; run the dedup scan periodically and resolve pairs from the compare screen.
Merge vs. split? Merge folds duplicates into one record (keeping a merge audit trail); split separates a record that wrongly conflates two distinct entities.
Do I have to accept every NER stub? No — the pipeline is review-first. Promote good ones to full authority records and reject the rest.
Why link to Wikidata/VIAF? External identifiers make your authorities interoperable and enrich EAC-CPF export for sharing with other institutions.

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