Name Authority in Digital Projects

I proposed a session on controlled vocabulary, but thought of a slightly different related topic: authority control of personal names. This could be merged with my other proposal or be a separate discussion? Questions to discuss include: Do you even attempt any sort of name authority control, that is, trying to have only one authorized form of the name of a particular person? Do you leave this up to your content management software? Do you maintain a spreadsheet? Do you rely on the form in your library’s online catalog and formulate other names according to the same rules? Do you use some other recognized system for establishing names? Would having a shared database of authorized names for Alabama persons be a good idea? How would we set it up?

– Dana Caudle