Boosting the Identifier Ecosystem of the University of Colorado Boulder Faculty

Abstract

Unique author identifiers play a crucial role in scholarly communication, enabling the correct attribution of authorship and the promotion and discovery of scholarly works. Identifiers benefit both the individual faculty member and their campus community as well. Academic library catalogers play an essential role in ensuring a robust identifier profile for the faculty on their campus and in growing and maintaining the broader identifier ecosystem. This study provides the most thorough analysis to date of the faculty identifier ecosystem of an R1 public university, examining the prevalence of five identifiers among the university’s faculty and using this information to determine practical ways that its cataloging team can boost the local and global identifier ecosystem, as well as providing guidance to other cataloging agencies interested in a similar endeavor.