This would present all the benefits of a standard file without requiring a significant investment of time and expense in the process.

[7] The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) joined the project on 5 October 2007.

The file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata.

[11] Borgman characterizes all three systems as attempts to solve the problem of author name disambiguation, which has grown in scale as the quantity of data multiplies.

[11] She notes that VIAF, unlike the other two systems, is led by libraries, as opposed to individual authors or creators.