Rick Bennett

Lead Software Engineer

Rick joined OCLC Research in 1996. He is currently working on developing and maintaining the FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminologies) database. He developed several interfaces to the FAST data and FAST based functionality, including a Library of Congress to FAST conversion interface (FAST Converter) and a map based interface to FAST geographic authorities (mapFAST). Most recently, he developed techniques to match and link FAST topical authority records to Wikipedia and Wikidata to improve the Linked Data functionality of FAST.

Previously, he developed personal name and geographic matching algorithms for the Virtual International Authority File Project, and has worked on the Web Characterization Project, Pinyin conversion of Chinese records, and the FirstSearch subject thesaurus feature.