Template:Authority control

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Description

Further information: Authority control and Wikipedia:Authority control

This template links Wikipedia articles to various library (and other) catalogue systems, for biographies and other topics.

This template draws its values from Wikidata. A pencil icon File:OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg gives convenient access to the "Identifiers" section of the corresponding Wikidata item.

Empty instances

If there is no information in Wikidata for the specific subject, an empty instance of this template will be dormant, meaning it will be invisible on the rendered page. Thus, using this template on a page with no authority information is harmless. An empty instance of this template stays dormant in an article, until values are added to Wikidata, when it will then display them.

Validation

The template attempts to validate digits for all values and shows an error if the check fails.

Position

See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout

As a metadata template, the Authority control template should be placed after the external links section and navigation templates, immediately before the categories.

Usage

{{Authority control}}

As a general guideline:

1. Insert the empty version
2. Click "Show preview" to see which sources are automatically pulled from Wikidata
3. If you know of more sources, add those sources to the article's Wikidata item, so that other language versions of Wikipedia will automatically benefit.

Suppression of identifiers

Identifiers can be selectively suppressed via the |suppress= parameter. For example:

{{Authority control |suppress=VIAF,LCCN,WORLDCATID}}

Specifying the Wikidata item

If a page is not connected to a Wikidata item (for example, a page in draft space or in project space), you can specify the appropriate item to draw data from, by using the |qid= parameter.

{{Authority control |qid=Q49605590}}

To find the correct item, you can search the database. If there is not yet an existing item, you can create a new item.

As soon as a Wikidata item is connected to a page, this parameter will be ignored so you can remove it from the template.

Additional Wikidata items

In some cases, you might need to specify additional items to draw data from. For example,

• Bonnie and Clyde also draws data from (Q2319886) and (Q3320282)
• North Rona also draws data from (Q28831543)

To specify additional items, you can use the |additional= parameter. For example: {{Authority control | additional = Q2319886, Q3320282}}

Examples

Victor Hugo

{{Authority control |qid=Q535}}

Alexander Graham Bell

{{Authority control |qid=Q34286}}

Harry Forbes Witherby

{{Authority control |qid=Q352545}}

Rendering

The template is split into a number of sections, including "General", "National libraries", "Art galleries and museums", etc. The template usually displays as a navbox with a header:

If all identifiers are in the same section, |state= is ignored, and the template displays on one line:

If you use additional qids to draw data from additional wikidata items, then a new section will be added for each. In this case, the identifiers will not be separated further:

Initial visibility: currently defaults to autocollapse

To set this template's initial visibility, the |state= parameter may be used:

• |state=collapsed: {{Authority control|state=collapsed}} to show the template collapsed, i.e., hidden apart from its title bar
• |state=expanded: {{Authority control|state=expanded}} to show the template expanded, i.e., fully visible
• |state=autocollapse: {{Authority control|state=autocollapse}}
  • shows the template collapsed to the title bar if there is a {{navbox}}, a {{sidebar}}, or some other table on the page with the collapsible attribute
  • shows the template in its expanded state if there are no other collapsible items on the page

If the |state= parameter in the template on this page is not set, the template's initial visibility is taken from the |default= parameter in the Collapsible option template. For the template on this page, that currently evaluates to autocollapse.

Wikidata and tracking categories

The template can get its information from the following properties on Wikidata:

Additional tracking categories

This template may add the following categories:

• Category:Pages with red-linked authority control categories (0) – error category to identify missing categories
• Category:Articles with suppressed authority control identifiers (0) – tracking only (no error)
• Category:Pages using authority control with parameters (0) – migrate IDs to Wikidata if possible (no error)
• Category:Pages using authority control with parameters different on Wikidata (0) – determine/remove incorrect IDs & migrate to Wikidata
• Category:Pages using authority control with parameters all matching Wikidata (0) – template parameters may safely be removed

Error reports

Click here to see a monthly parameter usage report for this template.

Microformat

The template wraps each UID value with the HTML markup: <span class="uid">...</span>, which enables the first-found value to be included in an hCard microformat.

See also

• Wikipedia:Authority control – editor information
  • FAQ
• Help:Authority control – reader help
• Template:Authority control (arts) – Art-only version
• Template:Taxonbar – authority control style template for taxonomic databases
• Template:Sports links – authority control style template for sports articles
• Template:Infobox book – supporting some library classification systems
• Template:Wikidata entity link
• Template:German National Library portal
• User:UBX/Authority control – for self-identifying as an AC user
• For more information:
  • de:Wikipedia:Normdaten (in German)
  • de:Hilfe:GND (in German)
  • Commons:Template:Authority control
• m:Interwiki map – definition of global custom interwiki prefixes

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. Click here to see a monthly parameter usage report for this template based on this TemplateData.

TemplateData for Authority control

A template to link Wikipedia articles to various library catalogue systems

Template parameters

This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
state	state	Initial state of the template Suggested values autocollapse expanded collapsed Default autocollapse	Unknown	optional
qid	qid	Wikidata QID number for an article not yet connected to a Wikidata item. Once the article is connected to a Wikidata item, then this parameter will be ignored. Example Q49605590	String	optional
suppress	suppress	Comma-separated list of identifers to suppress from the template. Will recognise the Wikidata property IDs (e.g. P227), or the abbreviated name of the identifier (e.g. VIAF). Example P227, P1986	String	optional
additional	additional	Comma-seprated list of additional Wikidata QIDs of items to display data for. Each should be related and covered by the article. Example Q28831543	String	optional

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Authority control/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.