GND for Cultural Data: The infrastructure has been modernised!
With the new offerings, archives, museums, cultural and scientific institutions, and researchers working on research projects can now more easily collaborate on the GND—that is, create, edit, and link entries themselves. And the GND central office at the German National Library (DNB) can better support communities in their integration into the GND network by providing the appropriate infrastructure. This enriches the GND immensely. However, GND4C first had to develop concepts to ensure that the collaboration would be successful. This is because different organisations have different requirements for the GND.
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„The GND is a deeply democratic tool for organising our knowledge—in other words, the treasure that we as humanity carry with us.“
Photo: Kerstin Jasinszczak
Terms had to be clarified and structures adapted in order to integrate cultural data – for example, on buildings, artists, geographic entities, and other works of art. As part of the DFG-funded GND4C research project, the team developed concepts and tools and tested them for productive use. The GND4C project has thus become synonymous with the opening up of the GND as a whole.
New infrastructure offerings
However, modernising the infrastructure is not the only prerequisite for successful collaboration on the GND. The partners have developed a number of new services in four areas: information, networking, empowerment, and sustainability.
Information – website, wiki, blog, and GND Explorer
It all starts with questions: What are authority data, how does the GND differ from other authority data, and how can you get involved? The GND website has been providing answers since 2021. It is constantly updated by the German National Library and is the primary source of information about the GND. There you can read the definitions and find out where to get support and advice on working with the GND. The website also explains how the GND cooperative is organised, what rules apply, and provides information about upcoming events. Information material is available for download in the Infothek. The website is supplemented by the GND Wiki and its blog. In addition to the publicly accessible pages, the Wiki also offers protected work areas for communities and projects.
With the DNB's new GND Explorer, users can search the entities in the authority file. This gives them intuitive access to almost 10 million GND entities and the links between them. The information is updated daily.
Networking – forums, working groups, and interest groups
In the field of authority data work, people like to talk about “communities.” These are sorted by sector, discipline, or topic. In reality, however, communities first have to find each other. This is easier in the discussion forums established by the GND in 2022. Over the past three years, the DNB has organised a dozen such forums in collaboration with partner organisations. The DNB provided information about the GND as an organisation and as a database and discussed the communities' needs with them. Most of the events attracted over 100 participants.
Particularly committed members of a community also form working or interest groups within the network of the Committee for Library Standards (STA). These committee formats help communities outside libraries to get involved in the GND. The GND Cooperative and the STA use them to discuss topics such as community-specific regulations, relevance criteria, application contexts, and special requirements for a GND data record.
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Empowerment – handouts, training courses, and automatic data synchronisation
Working with the GND is demanding. That is why handouts and training courses are available for users. These are offered by GND agencies such as the regional agency LEO-BW in Baden-Württemberg. Various media for getting started with the GND can be found on the GND Wiki, for example.
The GND Reconciliation Service provided by the University Library Center of North Rhine-Westphalia is helpful for organisations that want to participate in the GND. It has been part of the technical GND platform since 2024. With this application, organisations such as museums can easily find out which entities in their collection are included in the GND and which are not. They can use the results of the comparison to enrich their own data with GND identifiers. They can also use this as a basis for compiling a data set that they can re-enter into the GND via a GND agency.
The example of the
Chinese stone drum
A vivid example for the
usefulness of the GND can
be found in the German
Museum of Books and
Writing Museum at the
DNB. Here stands a heavy
stone engraved with
Chinese characters forming
a poem. In China, it was
used as a printing block
around 2,000 years ago.
It was painted with ink and
then used to make an
impression on paper. In the
museum, many notes hang
above this stone drum,
which symbolically show
what information can be
linked to the stone in the
GND – for example, the
person who brought this
stone drum to Europe, the
poet who wrote the poem,
the granite from which this
stone drum is made, the
era in which drum was
created, the era in which
was found, and so on.
Credit: AfS (DNB), 2018, CC BY SA
Continuity – cooperation agreement, GND Committee, GND agencies
Over 1,000 institutions keep the GND up to date. To ensure the consistency and reliability of the authority data, long-term cooperation is required. When only libraries were involved in the GND, this was ensured through library networks. With the opening up to other areas, a cooperation agreement was needed. This agreement regulates the rights and obligations of members and the admission of new partners.
In the GND Committee, members discuss the rules for data collection, the transfer of larger data sets, and other issues. The members of the GND Committee are mostly GND agencies. They perform certain services on behalf of a community, such as data delivery, data quality assurance, and editorial tasks. They also represent their community to the GND Committee. By the end of 2024, two regional agencies will have completed the founding process. Another is in the pilot phase and five more are being set up. The agencies guarantee the quality of the data they contribute.
The rules for recording authority data in particular require structures that are transparent and participatory in their decision-making processes and integrative in their effect. The rules governing the recording of GND data sets follow the RDA DACH standard and the RSWK standard. The recording aids for the GND entity types are currently still stored in PDF files. They are detailed and contain many cross-references. This represents a significant barrier for new GND users. This hurdle is to be overcome by transferring the GND's recording aids and guidelines to a database, the STA documentation platform. The DNB is responsible for the concept and implementation.
The GND is growing – and transforming
The work on an open, integrative, and adaptable infrastructure for collaboration in the GND is worthwhile. It is therefore being taken up by a growing number of institutions.
The current initiatives from cultural and research communities that are integrated into the GND network. They use the infrastructure offerings that build on each other.
Credit: AfS (DNB), 2024, CC BY
Together, they all contribute to making the GND more diverse, comprehensive, networked, attractive, and ultimately more resilient—far beyond the circle of libraries. As a growing, transparent, and democratically created data network, the GND makes an important contribution to the digital transformation of the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums)—in line with the guidelines of the German National Library.
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Last changes:
18.06.2025
