One for all: opening the Integrated Authority File

The Integrated Authority File (GND) is to become more accessible: its wealth of data will no longer be reserved exclusively for libraries but will also benefit museums, archives, heritage organisations and scientific institutions. 2022 saw the achievement of important milestones on the way to opening and linking the GND with other systems.

Authority data represent and describe entities, e.g. people, places and works connected with cultural and academic collections. The advantage of authority data? They make cataloguing easier, offer definitive search entries and establish links between different information resources. 2022 saw considerable effort expended in the areas of organisational structure and community work so that non-library institutions can also benefit from the GND.

Which milestones have been achieved?

One example is that the tasks and services performed by the so-called GND agencies have been subjected to critical review. The GND agencies enable institutions that wish to do more than merely re-using existing authority data to make active contributions to the GND structure. Thanks to the GND agencies, the institutions are able to perform functions such as creating new data records. The tasks performed by the GND are highly diverse. The following graphic gives a good impression of these:

The work of GND agencies includes helping institutions to connect new data sets, which promotes the use of the GND’s treasure trove of data in a wide range of ways. Graphic: DNB

How can everyone benefit from the GND?

The existing organisational, expert and technical structures must be modernised and defined. The requirements of other cultural and scientific institutions such as archives, museums, media centres, universities, scientific networks and authorities responsible for the preservation of historic monuments must be better integrated and their practical cooperation facilitated. The DNB realised numerous projects in 2022 with this end in view.

ORCID

The aim of the DFG project ORCID DE is to provide sustainable support for the widely considered implementation of the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier) ID at universities and non-university research institutions – by universally integrating the GND into the scientific context.

Key element for the construction of a semantic data ecosystem: the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) funded by the federal and state administrations is supporting projects such as the opening and modernisation of the GND for research data. One of the focal areas of the project work carried out in 2022 was the development of the project infrastructure. The project also focused on identifying the specific requirements of researchers in the text-based and language-based sciences with regard to authority data. The discourse room GND Forum Text+ was set up for this purpose.

Blog posts on this topic:

• Workshop report: 2. GND Forum Text+
• And the beat goes on – the cooperation between GND and Text+
• Listening to text and language researchers
• Knots don't tie themselves

NFDI4Culture

NFDI4Culture is the consortium for research data on material and non-material cultural heritage. The "Standards, Data Quality and Curation" task area supports various community-specific projects. The goal: to improve the use and application of the GND. NFDI4Culture is also supporting the establishment of a GND agency for buildings.

Dialogue helps: space for discussion on the opening of the Integrated Authority File

The Integrated Authority File (GND) is to become more accessible: its wealth of data will no longer be reserved exclusively for libraries but will also benefit museums, archives, heritage organisations and scientific institutions. It is important that all the stakeholders involved in this process communicate with each other so that the needs of the "newcomers" are heard and integrated early on.

Authority data represent and describe entities, e.g. persons, places or works connected with cultural and scientific collections, thus facilitating their consolidation into comprehensive knowledge graphs. Authority data represent and describe entities, e.g. people, places and works connected with cultural and academic collections. Until now, the GND had mainly been used by libraries to catalogue their literature. However, archives, museums, cultural organisations and scientific institutions are also increasingly working with the GND during the course of their research projects. The modernisation and opening of the GND for other branches of culture also necessitates the further development of existing structures. This important community process is being actively promoted by the new discourse format "GND Forum", where the communities involved can bring up their specific needs or barriers and address them in a solution-oriented manner in workshops and working groups.

The right forum for every need

The format was developed by the German National Library's Office for Library Standards in cooperation with various partners. The decisive factors for the establishment of a GND Forum are the needs of the respective community. These can develop around a medium, a material, a sector or a theme. What all the communities have in common is their interest in the GND as a reference data system and the intention to use it in their own data. Four such forums were set up in 2022, and their work is still ongoing. Along with the GND Forum Performing Arts, they consist of the GND Forum Text+, the GND Forum Archive and the GND Forum Buildings.

Standardisation for all: Committee for Library Standards guarantees uniformity

Nothing is possible without joint standards: common standards, reference points and application rules are necessary in order to exploit the full potential of the large volumes of data in the humanities and cultural sciences. The Committee for Library Standards (STA) holds all the threads and guarantees uniformity. The emergence of new stakeholders means that there is a great deal to be communicated and coordinated.

We just have to imagine what it would be like if there were no agreement between libraries regarding the way in which data should be collected. There would be absolute chaos; searching for suitable literature would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The Committee for Library Standards has therefore been working for decades to ensure that libraries use uniform standards for cataloguing, interfaces and formats. It also promotes the harmonisation of cataloguing and data networking activities in multiple disciplines. The STA is a cooperative alliance of cultural and scientific organisations and institutions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is managed by the German National Library’s Office for Library Standards (AfS).

The Integrated Authority File is for everyone

One central "product" of the STA: the Integrated Authority File (GND). As its name suggests, it is a repository of authority data. These data represent and describe entities, e.g. people, places and works connected with cultural and academic collections. Libraries in particular use the GND to catalogue literature. However, archives, museums, cultural organisations and scientific institutions are also increasingly working with the GND while carrying out their research projects. The consequence of opening up the GND to other cultural sectors? The structures of the STA must be developed further. The committees and participant groups are also being gradually aligned with the new requirements.

What progress has been made in community work?

The Office for Library Standards (AfS) has been approached by increasing numbers of stakeholders since the process of opening the GND for other cultural institutions began. What they want: to have their own specialised or subject-specific needs taken into account in the further development of the GND.

The AfS supports the involvement of new communities, particularly with online launch events known as "forums". Besides building communities, the forums serve to pool interests, identify central needs and requests across the board and facilitate networking between shareholders. The establishment of interest groups (IGs) also serves this purpose. In principle, these organise themselves and the focal areas of their work on their own initiative but receive strong support from the AfS in matters relating to standardisation, the GND and committee work in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The interest groups include IG Archive, IG Performing Arts, IG Museum and IG Buildings.

The handbook is here: 3R project successfully concluded

The German National Library (DNB) has been using the RDA framework for its cataloguing activities since October 2015. The RDA is an international cataloguing standard. The RDA standard has now been given an innovative technical platform in the form of the new RDA Toolkit, which features a completely different document structure and modified content-related concepts. This will have far-reaching effects on the use of the Toolkit and on practices at cultural and scientific institutions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the DACH region).

This much is certain: the RDA will continue to be the cataloguing framework for the German-speaking countries in the future, which means that extensive adaptation is necessary. The cataloguing expert group was therefore asked to compile a joint cataloguing handbook for libraries in the German-speaking countries. This handbook will bring together all the rules needed for cataloguing purposes in one place. The handbook was commissioned by the Committee for Library Standards (STA), a cooperative alliance of cultural and scientific institutions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Its aim is to safeguard the use of uniform standards for cataloguing, interfaces and formats in libraries.

A new handbook for Germany, Austria and Switzerland

2022 saw the completion of the "3R for DACH Libraries" project, which was led by the German National Library and implemented in cooperation with various organisations in the German-speaking countries. The purpose of the project has been achieved; there is now a cataloguing handbook titled RDA-DACH for use in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Documented as a web application based on Wikibase, it describes the necessary elements along with numerous types of resources. It also encompasses resource descriptions for special materials such as old prints, music, university publications and serial resources. The first release includes almost all the element descriptions for published resources and the first rules for old prints. RDA-DACH will now be updated as part of the ongoing work on the cataloguing framework.

Although the project was designed for the German-speaking countries, links are also being forged with international bodies working on cataloguing frameworks. The DNB is for example a member of the RDA Steering Committee (RSC) and the European RDA Interest Group (EURIG), and has global connections in the thematic groups of the Committee for Library Standards (STA).

MARC 21: standardisation at international level

Facilitating the global use of data: at international level, the German National Library (DNB) is permanently involved in the standardisation of the bibliographic exchange format MARC (MAchine-Readable Cataloging) 21, which is used all over the world. In this context, it represents the interests of the German-language libraries.

Why did MARC 21 have to be adjusted at all? The reason was the thorough overhaul which the RDA (Resource Description and Access) cataloguing standard underwent as part of the so-called 3R project (RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign). RDA is an international cataloguing standard which was introduced in the German-speaking countries between 2012 and 2016 under the auspices of the DNB. The DNB has been using this framework for cataloguing purposes since October 2015. The MARC/RDA Working Group took over the coordination of the MARC 21 overhaul in 2019. It finished its work in 2022 and submitted a final report.

Wishes expressed by the German-speaking community

For the German-speaking community, the incorporation of provenance information into MARC 21 was a matter of particular importance. This information is summarised in RDA using the term "data provenance". A wide range of MARC 21 fields now allow references to existing information in the new subfield $7, "Data provenance" – this information could previously only be mapped using auxiliary constructions. In the case of bibliographic data, specific use cases include data as to whether the information was machine-generated and which transliteration norm was used. Transliteration in this context means that information available in non-Latin scripts (e.g. Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic and also Chinese) has undergone controlled conversion – character by character – into a Latin script.

With regard to authority data, it is now possible to transport the language and script-coded search entries and the markings referring to the usage context and responsible institution more clearly. In which language and script is this title available? In which context is this manuscript name variant used? Who added this field and its information to the data record – i.e. who can I contact in the event of queries? It is now also possible to transport freely formulated remarks more clearly in MARC.

Machine-based provenance research

Provenance research (from the Latin verb “provenire”, to originate) focuses on the origins and history of cultural artefacts. Another key topic was the machine-interpretable structuring of information on provenance research and provenance cataloguing. When documenting the sometimes varied and tortuous history of a single item, points and periods in time are recorded together with the item's ownership history and the provenance characteristics that testify to this.

In order to supplement and expand the text-oriented note field 561, the Provenance Cataloguing Working Group has submitted an application for a new MARC 21 field in cooperation with the DNB. This must be able to transport links to an authority file (such as the Integrated Authority File (GND)) or the Thesaurus of Provenance Terms (T-PRO). Controlled vocabulary describing the type of work, its legal status and its physical provenance characteristics are collected and maintained in T-PRO. A new field with the number 361, "Ownership and Custodial History in Structured Form", has now been created in the holdings and bibliographic data formats of MARC 21. Historical written documents and their provenance are also described in authority data format, which means that the GND may also be able to support the cataloguing of provenance characteristics for important works in the future.

History on the doorstep

National Socialist history can now be heard and experienced at more than 1,000 locations in Frankfurt am Main. The Frankfurt History App lets users find out what happened in their neighbourhood during the Nazi era. The app forms part of the digital project "Frankfurt and National Socialism. A Memory Platform". The project pools educational programmes on the subject of National Socialism; the German Exile Archive of the German National Library (DNB) has contributed to the app.

This enabled the Exile Archive strengthening its links with the city of Frankfurt's cultural institutions. The organisations behind the digital project are the Historical Museum Frankfurt, the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the Institute for the History of Frankfurt. The project links institutions, initiatives, museums and archives in Frankfurt and makes them and the themes they address more visible – including the DNB's Exile Archive, which is integrated into the Frankfurt History App. The German and English-language app engages with users in their present-day living environments. They can find out what happened in their neighbourhood in earlier times, discover historical locations and personal stories, learn more about Frankfurt's history during the National Socialist era and take tours of the city mapped out beforehand. Further content is to be added to the app.

In the footsteps of one of Frankfurt's famous citizens

Biographies are an important way to access history – and are therefore part of the app. The Exile Archive has incorporated the biography of Karola Siegel and important milestones of her life in Frankfurt am Main into the app. Siegel, who later became famous as sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, grew up at Brahmstrasse 8. She attended the Samson-Raphael-Hirsch-Schule, a strictly religious Jewish school at Tiergarten 8 in Frankfurt am Main, now the Heinrich-von-Gagern-Gymnasium. On 5 January 1939, at the age of ten, she travelled from Frankfurt's main railway station to Switzerland with a Kindertransport (children's transport). Her parents and grandmother stayed behind; they did not survive the Holocaust. Irma, Julius and Selma Siegel are remembered at the Börneplatz memorial site. The app contains texts and images about all these locations and the Exile Archive itself. The Frankfurt History App can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play Store.

To the "Memory Platform"

To the Frankfurt History App (Google Playstore)

To the Frankfurt History App (Apple App Store)

To the German Exile Archive 1939-1945

Cooperation with the We Refugees Archive

The We Refugees Archive is a growing digital archive on refugeedom in the past and present. It focuses on individual life stories and the city as a microcosm of refuge and new beginnings. The We Refugees Archive is a project initiated and led by "Minor – Projektkontor für Bildung und Forschung gemeinnützige GmbH" (Minor - Project Office for Education and Research). The Exile Archive of the German National Library (DNB) has been cooperating with the initiative on several levels.

Selected digitised items from the Exile Archive's collection have for example been integrated into the We Refugees Archive. Photographs and documents from the extensive estate of economist Fritz Neumark give an impression of exile in Turkey in the context of the topic "Istanbul". Fritz Neumark settled there in 1933 with the assistance of the Notgemeinschaft deutscher Wissenschaftler im Ausland ("Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad") and was awarded a professorship at the University of Istanbul. The Exile Archive provided access to digitised versions of photographs, passports, contracts and other documents from his estate. Exhibits from the Exile Archive's extensive collection "American Guild for German Cultural Freedom / Deutsche Akademie in Exile" have also been imported into the We Refugees Archive. The digitised objects in the We Refugees Archive are thus placed in new contexts and used in workshops for multipliers in the education sector.

Thinking in common: refugeedom then and now

The Exile Archive hosted a joint workshop during which interested teachers and other multipliers were introduced to the resources offered by both institutions. Like the network project "Arts in Exile", for which the German Exile Archive is responsible, the We Refugees Archive focuses on linking the history of exile between 1933 and 1945 with the experiences of present-day refugees. Contemporary stories of exile are increasingly being viewed through the lens of the historical dimensions of exile. During the panel discussion "Remembering (hi)stories of flight and exile" held at the German National Library, Dr. Sylvia Asmus (German Exile Archive), Dr. Anne von Oswald (We Refugees Archive), Cornelia Vossen (Exile Museum Berlin) and Asal Dardan (author) talked about how historic exile and modern-day stories of escape can be jointly remembered. The discussion was chaired by Dr. Sebastian Schirrmeister.

You will find more information about the We Refugees Archive here:

The German Exile Archive: networking and growth

The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library (DNB) is a platform for discussing the subjects of exile and emigration during the Nazi era. It collects testimonies of exile such as publications and institutional and personal legacies – from people in all walks of life and regardless of the prominence of the individual concerned. The goal is to capture the phenomenon of exile in all its diversity and to facilitate access to our holdings. The Exile Archive continued expanding its network in 2022.

Over the year, the Exile Archive was able to integrate its holdings metadata into additional platforms – and thus to embed it in more contexts. The transnational platform European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is a central knowledge hub for Holocaust research. Here, the 346 brief descriptions of the Exile Archive's holdings are joined by holdings metadata on this subject from more than 2,200 archives in 60 countries. The Exile Archive and its metadata can also be found in Archivportal-D and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library).

From the life of Leo Perutz

The digitisation of the estate of Austrian writer Leo Perutz (1882-1957), who emigrated to Palestine, has facilitated access to still more archival materials from the Exile Archive's holdings. 1,600 digitised works can now be accessed online for research purposes, including the fair copies of Perutz' novels "The Third Bullet" (1915), "The Marquis of Bolibar" (1920) and "From Nine to Nine" (1918). Numerous personal documents such as Perutz' pocket diary, which contains journal-like entries dating from 1909 to 1957, and extensive correspondence and family letters are now also available online. 

Enquiries from all over the world

Along with numerous collaborative initiatives and educational programmes, the improved visibility of the Exile Archive's collection is one of the reasons why there has been a strong increase in user queries. The holdings are used by researchers both in Germany and abroad. Enquiries were received from various countries, including Brazil, Iceland, Israel, Italy, France, the UK, Canada, Poland, Singapore, Spain and the USA.

The archive of the exile organisation American Guild for German Cultural Freedom and the archive of exile researcher and film expert Günter Peter Straschek experienced particularly high demand. The organisation of the 9th annual conference of KOOP-LITERA Germany in Frankfurt strengthened the links connecting the archival world. The three-day conference focused on the topics of digitisation and cooperative virtual projects; the institutions in Frankfurt also had the opportunity to present themselves and their collections.

Focus on science: the German Museum of Books and Writing as a research partner

New research projects and greater involvement in academia: 2022 saw the further advancement of collaborations with partners in the scientific community. Since the relationship between collection and research has been given a large-scale boost by the digital supply of objects and metadata, cooperation with research organisations has become a matter of considerable strategic importance for memory institutions. It is increasingly becoming part of the library sector's raison d'être to feed metadata holdings and collections – both digital and analogue – into the circuitry of science.

The German Museum of Books and Writing (DBSM) at the German National Library is thus faced with a dynamic requirements profile. This can be better explained by a number of practical examples. Along with research projects focusing on special digital or analogue collections – whether pulp novels, kinetic books or watermarks – the German National Library (DNB) is receiving more and more enquiries relating to infrastructural topics. The scientific questions that the DBSM is investigating in cooperation with partners in the fields of the digital humanities, data science, librarianship and AI cover a wide spectrum: from the cinematic representation of the collection's moveable objects via text mining and quantitative methods for measuring scientific research to mathematical models of image recognition.

A network of support: cooperation with research partners

Recent years have seen the development of a stable network of partners in the scientific community. These include the University of Munich's Centre for Book Studies and Delft University of Technology. Along with research projects, the network also encompasses collaborative programmes in the field of academia. One such example is the project "Time Capsule. Collecting the Book Fair", which will last for three semesters and is being realised in cooperation with Leipzig University of Applied Sciences. The University of Leipzig is also funding a lectureship on the past and future of knowledge storage. Another project is the evaluation of the virtual reality version of Goethe's Faust – developed in cooperation with the television broadcasting company ZDF – by the LMU University of Munich.

The DBSM in science: teaching, supervising, networking

However, the DBSM's work goes beyond teaching and the supervision and appraisal of final theses. One major goal of the collaborative teaching programmes, for example, is to develop exchange programmes for doctoral students. This has for example taken place in the context of the EU project MECANO, which focuses on tendencies to create canon in citation practice, and in the DFG's research training group "Literature and the Public Sphere". The DBSM also offers workshops for the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Association for the Promotion of German Science and Humanities) and the European Summer University for the Digital Humanities (ESU). Moreover, it is stepping up its participation in committees such as the Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Association. The Scientific Service initiated by the DBSM and the Domain Acquisitions and Cataloguing has firmly rooted the DNB's cooperation with the scientific community in its self-understanding.

News from the German Union Catalogue of Serials

The German Union Catalogue of Serials (ZDB) plays a major role in the German library landscape: it is the national bibliographic instrument and central reference database for serial works of all kinds. Berlin State Library (SBB) and the German National Library (DNB) aim to continue stabilising and strengthening the importance of the ZDB in a changing library landscape.

The German Union Catalogue of Serials will continue to be an important element of the data infrastructure for journals in the years to come. Berlin State Library and the German National Library are therefore playing an active part in the System Landscape Working Group. This was jointly established in 2022 by the Consortium of Library Networks (AGV) for the German-language library networks, the Electronic Journal Library (EZB) and the German Union Catalogue of Serials.

The aim of the System Landscape Working Group? To map existing data flows and thus to obtain an overview of the existing data infrastructure. New library systems and electronic resource management systems are creating new network hubs, particularly in the electronic journals segment. These have already changed the flow of data and will continue to do so in the future. The mapping of data flows is intended to serve as the basis of their subsequent optimisation.

ZDB becomes a master file for WorldCat

WorldCat is a global database of bibliographic data and holdings records. In future, WorldCat operator OCLC will recognise the ZDB as the master file for serial bibliographic records in German cataloguing language. This will mean that new serial bibliographic records that use German cataloguing language can only be delivered to WorldCat via the ZDB. The ZDB will thus be permanently anchored into the WorldCat global database. The quality of the ZDB data in WorldCat will also increase since the number of duplicate bibliographic records in German cataloguing language will be reduced.

At the end of 2022, all the serial bibliographic records in German cataloguing language were centrally delivered to WorldCat from the ZDB for the first time. The German-language library networks discontinued their deliveries of serial data to WorldCat at the same time. The import of the data dump delivered centrally via the ZDB required extensive clean-up work in WorldCat. Regular centralised deliveries from the ZDB throughout 2023 will help maintain the improvement in data quality in the long term.

Analysis of data fields for holdings and licence information becoming easier

The optimisation of the data structures and data formats used by the German Union Catalogue of Serials continued to be an important goal in 2022. In focus: an overhaul of the data fields for holdings and licence information designed to make them machine-interpretable. This is necessary to offer improved analyses of the information they contain, which is in turn required for specific functions in the areas of interlibrary lending, document delivery services, the ZDB catalogue and JOP (Journal Online & Print).