Linked Data: German National Library Announces “GND Ontology”

From the Open Glam Blog:

A while ago, we blogged about the German National Library releasing more open data under a more open license. Now they have gone a step further and announced their own “GND ontology”
[Clip]
GND is a Linked Data system, in that it based around the idea of linking together a Web of decentralised descriptions. A GND document, unlike a traditional Web page, can be combined with other GND documents to create a unified database of information. It also allows it to be combined with other vocabularies and ontologies and to be used usable with the wide variety of generic tools and services that have been created for the Semantic Web.

Read the Complete Blog Post
Direct to Ontology (via German National Library, DNB)

The need for name disambiguity and entries having an authoritative character is an issue that concerns a lot more communities than the library world. In a growing information society the unique identification and linking of persons, places and other authorities becomes more and more important. The GND Ontology aims to transfer the made experience from libraries to the web community by providing a vocabulary for the description of conferences or events, corporate bodies, places or geographic names, differentiated persons, undifferentiated persons (name of undifferentiated persons), subject headings, and works.

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, National Libraries, News