Skip to main content
Private access is opening up — request an invite
askFinz
All collections

Reference collection

Named entities, on a shelf of their own

Organisations, places and other named things filed as records in their own right, rather than only as mentions inside something else.

What’s on this shelf

Filed as records so a name is a thing that can be looked up, not only a string that appears in documents about other subjects.

What one record is

One named thing, kept as its own record rather than as a mention buried in another document.

Every record also keeps the address it was read from, so any answer built on it can be followed back to the original.

What you can do with it

What this collection is kept for.

Start from the name

Ask about an organisation or a place and reach the record for it, rather than the first document that happens to mention it.

Held as recordsLooked up by nameTraceable to where it was published

Read it beside the material

Entities sit next to the collections that refer to them, so a name and the work around it can be read together.

Follow it back

Every record keeps the address it was read from, so what is held about a name can be checked.

What it is not good for

known limits
  • It is not a company register and it is not a source of truth about who anyone is. It records what was published, not what is official.
  • It is not a background check, and it must not be used as one.

Where it’s used

Finance

Finance reads this collection when a question starts from a name rather than from a filing.

The index behind it

Read, filed and kept current.

This collection is one shelf of the askFinz index — material read from the source and filed as the kind of thing it is, rather than as undifferentiated web pages. The counts above are read from the running system.