We are proud to announce a new and massive Wikibase project that will keep a big community busy for far more than a year: Last month the president of the University of Erfurt, Prof. Dr. Walter Bauer-Wabnegg, and Dr. Elisabeth Niggemann, director-general of the German National Library in Frankfurt and Leipzig (DNB) signed a memorandum of understanding that aims to bring GND data into the FactGrid – on a large scale.
The GND, the Integrated Authority File, is an authority file for millions of persons plus corporate bodies, conferences and events, geographic Information, topics and works – designed to harmonise the exchange between libraries, archives and academic projects in the DACH countries, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
To have the GND inside had been our constant topic over the last year. A Wikibase instance is a cool thing to contribute to as soon as it is the research tool you yourself would use in your research. GND data link into the world of open data, they clarify who or what you are speaking of in your research in all German language contexts – and they will reach out the other global authority files and to the universe of library data.
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