Personal data in a large digital library

The RePEc Economics library offers the largest distributed source of freely downloadable scientific research reports in the world. RePEc also contains details about Economics institutions, publication outlets and people working in the field. All this data forms a large relational dataset. In this paper we describe HoPEc, a system that allows to implement access control records personal data within RePEc. The bulk of these records describe the authors of documents. These records are maintained by the authors themselves. We discuss the technical and social aspects of this system.