Using Internet Resources to Research Dates of Birth and Death of Relatively Obscure Individuals for Inclusion in Name Authority Records

Establishing unique name headings for relatively obscure and deceased individuals who lived in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be challenging for the Name Authority Cooperative (NACO) cataloger. These people are not well documented in conventional reference materials, nor are they still alive to contact directly. Adding dates to personal name headings to disambiguate persons is recognized in both the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules and in Resource Description and Access as serving user needs. Dates of birth and death are not only useful for establishing distinctive name headings, they also provide chronological context. There is an increasing amount of information available at Internet sites on people who lived in the United States. While genealogists are the primary audience for many of these sites, they can also aid the NACO cataloger. A few key sites are described.