Saturday, August 17, 2013

Be careful what you ask for ...


In a previous blogpost and on #Wikidata I asked for the deletion of P107, the infamous "main type (GND)". As you can read in the closing statement, P107 will be deleted.

For persons it will likely be replaced by "instance of" "person". It will be more complicated for the other GND types. Many of the data items will not easily fit in any way and those entries will probably be deleted.

In all this it is really important to understand that this does not reflect at all on the work done at the Deutsche National Bibliothek. We will still refer as many items as we can to their database. If anything I hope the cooperation with the DNB will continue to improve.

The one thing I am anxious about in all this is how long it will take to fix tools like the reasonator and the geneawiki who rely on the existence of the "main type GND".
Thanks,
      GerardM

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