VIAF: The Virtual International Authority File

VIAF is a joint project of several national libraries, implemented and hosted by OCLC. The project's goal is to lower the cost and increase the utility of library authority files by matching and linking the authority files of national libraries, and then making that information available on the Web.

Participating institutions are:

• National Library of Australia
• National Library of the Czech Republic
• Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt)
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
• Getty Research Institute
• National Library of Israel
• Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico (Italy)
• Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal
• Biblioteca Nacional de España
• National Library of Sweden
• Swiss National Library
• Library of Congress/NACO
• Vatican Library
• NUKAT Center (Poland)
• Library and Archives Canada
• NII (Japan)
• National Széchényi Library (Hungary)

We also load files into VIAF for testing:

• RERO (Switzerland) -test

The search box at the top of this page searches a merged view of VIAF, currently derived from the personal name authority and related bibliographic data of the participating libraries.

More information can be found at the OCLC Research VIAF Project page.