The CERL Thesaurus contains forms of imprint places, imprint names, personal names and corporate names as found in material printed before the middle of the nineteenth century – including variant spellings, forms in Latin and other languages, and fictitious names.
The CERL Thesaurus merges standard and authority forms of names contributed by CERL member libraries and other libraries/projects and makes these searchable in one single system. CERL does not impose its own authoritative form of name. Instead, standard and variant forms are listed alphabetically with a clear indication of the institutions where a particular standard form is in use.
The CERL Thesaurus is an important node in a network of data, including Wikidata.
- Names of places contain geo-references and are shown on a map.
- Names of persons or corporate entities involved in the intellectual production of books (authors, translators etc.) with their variant name forms and pseudonyms, contain biographical information, portraits, links to place names, as well as links to relatives, co-workers, successors and predecessors.
- Names of persons and corporate entities involved in the physical production of books (names appearing in imprints, such as printers, booksellers etc.) with their variant names and pseudonyms, contain biographical information, and extensive linking to digital images of printers’ devices.
- Names of former book owners, personal and corporate, contain links to catalogues of the libraries where their books are held today.
Content
A complete overview of the files that have been integrated into the CERL Thesaurus is available here.
Statistics
Statistics related to the content of the CERL Thesaurus and its use are available here.
Licence
The CERL Thesaurus data is available under the terms of Etalab’s Open Licence, which can be considered equivalent to ODC-BY and CC-BY 2.0.
Please see here for the full legal text of the licence in French or English.