Know your library - Describing the doctoral candidates in the Asteri Database
29.03.2019
All authors, who have published doctoral dissertations at the University of Turku, are entered into a National Library maintained non-public Asteri Authority Database and also into the Finnish National Bibliography. This has previously been done by the National Library of Finland, but from 2019 onwards it has become part of the Turku University Library’s responsibilities.
What is described in the Authority Database?
In addition to the authorized name format, the authority records of the individuals in the Asteri Database include the birth year and place and the profession, among others.
An authorized name format is used to record and retrieve information regarding publications. Authorized name formats bind together different forms of author names, including different language versions or spellings. They help to distinguish between individuals with the same name and link information about the publications into different databases correctly. When a person's authorized name format is changed, the change will be transferred to all of the records.
Where does the information come from?
The Library and the University Communications have agreed that the Library can access new doctoral dissertation information and is allowed to use it in the description of the authority record.
The role of the library is mentioned in the Privacy Statement of the dissertation. When signing the doctoral dissertation information, the doctoral candidate accepts the recording of the data into the Asteri Database. However, after recording the information, the open access library databases will show only the doctoral candidate’s year of birth. This makes it easier to narrow down searches for authors and publications.