Authordatetyyppisiä

Authordatetyyppisiä is a Finnish adjective used in library science and data modeling to describe data or data structures that pertain to author-type classifications within metadata. In practice, it denotes metadata elements that encode the typology of authorship—who contributed as author, editor, translator, illustrator, or in other roles—within a resource’s description. The concept emphasizes distinguishing different kinds of contribution rather than treating all contributors as a single author.

The word is formed in Finnish by combining the English loan phrase “author data” with the Finnish suffix -tyyppisiä to denote a category or type. It is not a standardized term in international metadata guidelines and is mainly encountered in Finnish-language discussions or exploratory writings on metadata design. As such, it should be interpreted as a descriptive label rather than a formal standard.

Applications and examples: In metadata catalogs and data models, authordatetyyppisiä data would support role-based indexing and retrieval. Examples of author types include primary author, editor, translator, compiler, and corporate author. In practice, standards and vocabularies used to express these roles include FRBR-LRM, RDA contributor roles, and MARC authority and linking fields. The concept provides a framework for organizing contributors beyond a single “author” label, facilitating better disambiguation and search.

Relation to standards: The idea aligns with the broader distinction between agents and their roles, such as Dublin Core creator versus contributor and FRBR’s Work–Expression–Manifestation framework, as well as authority data that link unique identities to roles. Benefits include clearer attribution and improved retrieval; drawbacks include potential confusion from mixing terminology or creating nonstandard labels, underscoring the importance of mapping to established vocabularies. See also: Dublin Core, MARC, FRBR, RDA, authority data.