Gemeinsame Körperschaftsdatei (GKD)

The Gemeinsame Körperschaftsdatei (Corporate Body Authority File, GKD) is the relevant norm data file for German and foreign corporate body names in the German speaking area. During the 1970s it was developed from the corporate body citations of the periodicals database known as the German Union Catalogue of Serials (ZDB) of the Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main and the Bavarian State Library Munich. The file is now maintained and edited by the Bavarian State Library, the Berlin State Library, the German National Library and also the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and updated on an ongoing basis to include corporation names from magazine and monograph listings by German and Austrian library networks.

Besides standard and reference forms of corporate-body names created in accordance with the "Regeln für die alphabetische Katalogisierung" (Rules for Alphabetical Cataloguing, RAK-WB) the GKD includes further specifications regarding the corporate-body as well as chronological and hierarchical operations. At present it contains more than 990.000 data records with steadily rising tendency.

The GKD is an essential instrument to tapping printed and digital documents and is widely used in the library section as well as for the construction of knowledge and information systems in areas outside the ambit of libraries.

The GKD is available online as part of the catalogue of the German National Library as well as - together with the Personennamendatei (PND) and the Schlagwortnormdatei (SWD) - on the Normdaten DVD-ROM published by the German National Library. Furthermore it can be ordered from the department Digital Services.

Please note: authority data will no longer be available in the MAB format as of the implementation date of the Gemeinsame Normdatei April 19 2012

Information about the GKD (available only in German)