Navigation and service

Overview

Information about individual publications or GND entities whose identification is known can be retrieved via the Linked Data Service of the German National Library by persistent HTTP URIs in various RDF serialisations in direct access. HTTP content negotiation is supported. The delivered data is up-to-date.

URI schema and HTTP content negotiation

All ressources are unambigously identified by persistent URIs in the namespace: https://d-nb.info/

Entity URIs

Entities like publications or GND entities are identified by so-called entity URIs.

Example:
The persistent URI https://d-nb.info/1068193778 identifies unambigously the novel "Effi Briest" by Theodor Fontane as printed 2014 edition of the Reclam publishing house (DNB identification number 1068193778).

Example:
The persistent URI https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768 identifies unambigously the writer, theatre stage director and playwright Bertolt Brecht (GND identification number 118514768).

When calling the entity URIs there is always a HTTP redirect to the description of the ressource (with HTTP status code 303 "See Other").

Description-URIs

The descriptions of publications or GND entities are identified by URIs which differ form entity URIs by the path specification "/about". They are called description URIs.

Example:
https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768/about
identifies the description of Bertold Brecht.

Example:
https://d-nb.info/1068193778/about
identifies the description of the novel „Effi Briest“ by Theodor Fontane as printed 2014 edition of the Reclam publishing house.

Wenn calling the entity URIs, always the description of the ressource is delivered (with HTTP status code 200 "OK"). If no format and serialisation is explicitly requested (s. section HTTP content negotiation), usually the HTML representation of the record at the DNB catalouge is delivered.

HTTP content negotiation

Via the HTTP header „Accept“ the wished format and serialisation for entity URIs as well as for desription URIs can be requested. The following RDF data is currently suppoted:

Publications:

  • application/rdf+xml
  • text/turtle
  • application/ld+json
  • application/vnd.dnb.bibframe.rdf+xml (BIBFRAME prototype)

GND entities:

  • application/rdf+xml
  • text/turtle
  • application/ld+json

Example:
GET https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768/about HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/rdf+xml

Non serialised content URIs

For identifiying RDF description of entities in the Linked Data Service URIs with path specification „/lds“ are used.

Example:
https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768/about/lds
identifies the description of Bertold Brecht in RDF.

Example:
https://d-nb.info/1068193778/about/lds
identifies the description of the novel "Effi Briest" by Theodor Fontane as printed 2014 edition of the Reclam publishing house in RDF.

Wenn calling the non serialised content URIS the description of the ressource is delivered (with HTTP status code 200 "OK"). If no format and serialisation is explicitly requested (s. section HTTP content negotiation), the RDF Turtle representation of the description is delivered by default.

Content URLs

The RDF description documents are also directly callable via their locations. The so-called content URLs are not persistent, in case of changes information will be given at an early stage via Linked data service mailing list. At present the content URLs differ from non serialised content URIs by file extension.

Example:
https://d-nb.info/gnd/118514768/about/lds.rdf
provides the description of Bertold Brecht in RDF (RDF/XML).

Example:
https://d-nb.info/1068193778/about/lds.ttl
identifies the description of the novel "Effi Briest" by Theodor Fontane as printed 2014 edition of the Reclam publishing house in RDF (Turtle).

Unterstützt werden folgende Dateiendungen:

  • .rdf for RDF (RDF/XML)
  • .ttl for RDF (Turtle)
  • .jsonld for RDF (JSON-LD)

The RDF data service „Entity Facts“ is a profile of the Linked data service. It is currently accessible only via content URLs in the form https://hub.culturegraph.org/entityfacts/<GND-ID>.

Legacy URIs

From the beginnings of the service the following URIs are still supported:

  • https://d-nb.info/.../about/rdf as alias for the RDF representation RDF (RDF/XML) (replaced by content URL https://d-nb.info/.../about/lds.rdf)
  • https://d-nb.info/.../about/bibframe as access to the BIBFRAME prototype (only available in serialisation RDF (RDF/XML))

Further access options

Information to metadata provision via the Catalogue of the German National Library and the Data Shop, in form of full copies and via interfaces is to be found here.

Terms of use and provision

Detailed information on terms of use and provision is given here.

Contact

metadatendienste@dnb.de

Last changes: 12.08.2024

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