Using the API

The Virtual International Authority File is a project from the OCLC Office of Research which brings together authority data from 16 different authority files in 23 libraries worldwide. The web service provides a way to search authority information and retrieve authority records in a variety of formats.

Frequency of data update

Data for VIAF is updated on a monthly basis.

Linked Data

VIAF is exposed Linked Data.

Content Negotiation

VIAF is capable of content negotiation for requested URLs. Therefore different the Accept/Header retrieve content in different formats. Below is a table of the Accept/Headers recognized by VIAF, the format of the corresponding response and the corresponding URL for accessing the data without using Accept/Headers.