Libraries do something they call "name authority control". For most people in IT, this would be called "assigning unique identifiers to names." Identifying authors is considered one of the essential aspects of library cataloging, and it isn't done in any other bibliographic environment, as far as I know.
M. V.Shinde, und Prof.H.A.Hingoliwala. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication, 3 (4):
1797--1801(April 2015)