About the Integrated Authority File (GND)

The Integrated Authority File (GND) is a service facilitating the collaborative use and administration of authority data. These authority data represent and describe entities, i.e. persons, corporate bodies, conferences and events, geographic entities, topics and works relating to cultural and academic collections. Libraries in particular use the GND to catalogue publications. However, archives, museums, cultural and academic institutions, and researchers involved in research projects are also increasingly working with the GND. Authority data make cataloguing easier, offer definitive search entries and forge links between different information resources.

Every entity in the GND features a unique and stable identifier (GND ID). This makes it possible to link the authority data with both each other and external data sets and web resources. This results in a cross-organisational, machine-readable data network.

More information about the GND at https://gnd.network

More information for professionals (only available in German)

More about cataloguing media works

GND-Kooperative

The GND is cooperatively managed by the German National Library, all library networks of the German-speaking countries and their participating libraries, the German Union Catalogue of Serials, and many other institutions. This GND-Kooperative is open to accepting new partners bound by the same shared goals and tasks.

The Committee for Library Standards is the governing body of the GND-Kooperative. It is supported in its work by the GND Committee. The German National Library operates the administrative office for this cooperative and is also responsible for operating and further developing the GND.

Collaboration in the GND takes place either via agencies (such as library networks) or in direct consultation with the German National Library.

GND cooperation agreement (only available in German) 37kB, PDF - Barrier-free file

More about the Online Standard Interface

More about the GND web form

Further development of the GND

Until now, the GND has been fundamentally geared towards use by libraries. In future, the GND-Kooperative wishes to extend the circle of users and open itself to various users in the spheres of culture and academia: a cross-domain product is to be created on the basis of a development programme lasting several years.

More about development of the GND

To search for GND-IDs

The records of the GND are curated and provided by the members of the GND cooperative and associated institutions. To find the authority records either as a single ID or in selections various applications and services are offered by the partners in the GND cooperative. Find all of them introduced: https://gnd.network/Webs/gnd/DE/Entdecken/entdecken_node.html

Metadata services

We make the GND authority data publicly accessible in various formats and through various channels. Both individual data records and the entire data set are freely available at no charge under "Creative Commons Zero" (CCO 1.0) license terms.

• Full copies available through WWW/SFTP servers in MARC 21, MARC21-XML formats
• Full copies available through Linked Data in RDF (RDF/XML), RDF (JSON-LD), RDF (Turtle) formats
• SRU-Interface in MARC21-XML, RDF (RDF/XML) formats
• OAI-Interface in MARC21-XML, RDF (RDF/XML) formats
• Ongoing subscription to metadata in MARC 21, MARC21-XML, RDF (RDF/XML) formats through the GND-Change Service
• Selection/import of individual data records in MARC 21, MARC21-XML, RDF (RDF/XML), RDF (JSON-LD), RDF (Turtle) formats
• Entity Facts in RDF format (JSON-LD)
• Data shop in MARC 21, MARC21-XML, RDF (RDF/XML), RDF (JSON-LD), RDF (Turtle) formats

More about metadata services

Contact

gnd-info@dnb.de