News

University and Municipal Library of Cologne makes 3.1 million bibliographic records freely accessible

A number of libraries in Germany have followed CERN's lead and released their metadata under CC0. In cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz), several Cologne libraries, including the city's University and Municipal Library (USB), have placed their bibliographic records in the public domain. For decades, the collection of these data has been publicly financed; now they are available to the public in their entirety and without restriction. The release of the data means that anyone can download, modify and use them for any purpose whatsoever. The library catalogues are available for free public use.

The release of bibliographic data also creates the basis for linking catalogue data to data from other sources in the Semantic Web. 

The release makes the contrast between openly licensed and restricted-access data particularly visible. For years now, the German National Library has been benefiting from Wikipedia authors' links to, enrichment of and feedback about the 'Personennamendatei' (PND), the German authority file for personal names. However, projects such as Wikipedia are not  allowed to use the PND data themselves in return.

Link to the press release: Cologne-based libraries to pioneer Open Data practice

Link to the USB Cologne's databases