कलाकारों के नाम की केंद्रीय सूची (अँग्रेजी:Union List of Artist Names या ULAN) वर्तमान में लगभग 293,000 नाम और कलाकारों के बारे में अन्य जानकारी से युक्त एक ऑनलाइन डेटाबेस का उपयोग कर करने वाली नियंत्रित शब्दावली है। इसमें कलाकारों के नाम, छद्मनाम, संस्करण, वर्तनी, कई भाषाओं में नाम, और परिवर्तित नाम (जैसे शादी के बाद परिवर्तित नाम) आदि शामिल हो सकते हैं। हालांकि यह एक सूची के रूप में प्रदर्शित किया जाता है, जो एक कोश, कोश निर्माण के लिए आईएसओ और आईएसओ मानकों के अनुरूप संरचित है। यह श्रेणीबद्ध और साहचर्य संबंध पर आधारित होता है। 

यह सूची पूरी तरह से कलाकारों के व्यक्तिगत विवरण पर आधारित और केन्द्रित होता होती है। वर्तमान में इसमें लगभग 120,000 कलाकार शामिल हैं। डेटाबेस में, प्रत्येक कलाकार के रिकार्ड का एक अनूठा संख्यात्मक आईडी के आधार पर पहचान की गयी है (यह भी इस पुस्तिका में एक विषय कहा जाता है)। प्रत्येक कलाकार का रिकॉर्ड अंकित करने के लिए लिंक्ड नाम, संबंधित कलाकारों का विवरण, डेटा के लिए सूत्रों से जानकारी, और नोट आदि का प्रयोग होता हैं। इसमें अस्थायी कवरेज पेश करने के लिए प्राचीनकाल से पद्धतियों के साथ-साथ अपडेटेड प्रणालियों का इस्तेमाल होता है जो वैश्विक होता है।

यह सूची उचित नाम और कलाकारों के बारे में संबंधित जानकारी उपलब्ध कराती है। इसमें कलाकारों या तो व्यक्तियों (व्यक्ति) या व्यक्तियों के समूहों (कॉरपोरेट निकायों) के साथ मिलकर काम किया जा सकता है। इस सूची में आम तौर पर गर्भाधान या दृश्य कला और स्थापत्य कला के उत्पादन में शामिल रचनाकारों का प्रतिनिधित्व होता हैं। कुछ प्रदर्शनकारी कलाकारों (जैसे अभिनेता, नर्तक, और अन्य कलाकारों के प्रदर्शन) को भी शामिल किया जाता हैं लेकिन आम तौर पर नहीं।

History
Work on the ULAN began in 1984, when the Getty decided to merge and coordinate controlled vocabulary resources for use by the J. Paul Getty Trust's many automated documentation projects. The Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) was already being managed by the Getty at this time, and the Getty attempted to respond to requests from Getty projects for additional controlled vocabularies for artists' names (ULAN) and geographic names (TGN). In 1987 the Getty created a department dedicated to compiling and distributing terminology. The ULAN grows and changes via contributions from the user community and editorial work of the Getty Vocabulary Program.

Although originally intended only for use by Getty projects, the broader art information community outside the Getty expressed a need to use ULAN for cataloging and retrieval. The Getty thus distributed ULAN for broader use according to the tenets previously established for the construction and maintenance of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus: Its scope includes names needed to catalog and retrieve information about the visual arts and architecture; it is based on terminology that is current, warranted for use by authoritative literary sources, and validated by use in the scholarly art and architectural history community; and it is compiled and edited in response to the needs of the user community. Originally constructed as a simple alphabetized "union list" of clustered artist names and biographies, in order to make it consistent with the AAT and Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, in the late 1990s ULAN was brought into compliance with national and international standards for thesaurus construction. Its scope was broadened to include corporate bodies such as architectural firms and repositories of art, which may have hierarchical levels.

The ULAN was founded under the management of Eleanor Fink (head of what was then called the Vocabulary Coordination Group, and later Director of the Art History Information Program, later called the Getty Information Institute). The ULAN has been constructed over the years by numerous members of the user community and an army of dedicated editors, under the supervision of several managers. The ULAN was published in 1994 in hardcopy (Union List of Artist Names. Project manager, James M. Bower; senior editor, Murtha Baca. New York: G.K. Hall, 1994) and machine-readable files. Given the growing size and frequency of changes and additions to the ULAN, by 1997 it had become evident that hard-copy publication was impractical. It is now published in automated formats only, in both a searchable online Web interface and in data files available for licensing. The data for ULAN is compiled and edited in an editorial system that was custom-built by Getty technical staff to meet the unique requirements of compiling data from many contributors, merging, moving, and publishing in various formats. Final editorial control of the ULAN is maintained by the Getty Vocabulary Program, using well-established editorial rules. The current managers of the ULAN are Patricia Harpring, Managing Editor, and Murtha Baca, Head, Vocabulary Program and Digital Resource Management.

Terms
The ULAN is a structured vocabulary containing around 120,000 records, including 293,000 names and biographical and bibliographic information about artists and architects, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants.

Design
Even though the structure is relatively flat, the ULAN is constructed as a hierarchical database; its trees branch from a root called Top of the ULAN hierarchies (Subject_ID: 500000001); it currently has two published facets: Person and Corporate Body. Entities in the Person facet typically have no children. Entities in the Corporate Body facet may branch into trees. There may be multiple broader contexts, making the ULAN structure polyhierarchical. In addition to the hierarchical relationships, the ULAN also has equivalent and associative relationships.

Footnotes

See also
Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)
Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)
Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA)
Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA)
Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO)
Getty Vocabulary Program

External links

Union List of Artist Names Online Search the ULAN online for free.
About the Getty Vocabularies
About ULAN
Getty Vocabulary Editorial Guidelines The editorial guidelines for the AAT, ULAN, and TGN contain rules and guidelines intended for use by the editors of the Getty Vocabulary Program using the in-house editorial system, VCS (Vocabulary Coordination System). Contributors to the Getty Vocabularies and implementers of the licensed vocabulary data may consult these guidelines as well.
Training materials and presentations created by the Getty Vocabulary Program The documents on this page include presentations and other training materials for the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA), and standards in general.

Controlled vocabularies
J. Paul Getty Trust
Museum books
Thesauri
Arts databases
Online person databases
Library cataloging and classification