User instructions

Screencast by Dr. Andreas Hartmann (Augsburg) introducing the use of Gnomon online.

The Würzburg University Library has created an electronic tutorial that introduces the use of the Gnomon database.

Background information

The Gnomon Bibliographic Database (GBD) is supported by the Chairs of Ancient History in Augsburg and Eichstätt. With more than 750,000 entries, it is one of the most comprehensive database systems for specialized literature in the entire field of Classical Studies, including the subject-specific history of science. It lists monographs, edited volumes and the individual articles they contain, journal articles, reviews, and specialized encyclopedias from the period in all relevant scientific languages, which can be searched in detail with the help of an extensive, multilingual thesaurus (currently about 25,000 keywords). Monographs are also mostly indexed using the standard vocabulary of the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND). The indexing of YouTube content and Internet resources is currently a unique feature of GBD. An intensive cooperation has existed for some time now between the Bavarian State Library (Munich) and the university libraries of Augsburg, Eichstätt and Tübingen. There are also collaborations with the editorial staff of the journal Gnomon (Munich) and the Joint Library of the Hellenic & Roman Societies (London). Another cooperation agreement was also concluded with the German Archaeological Institute.

As part of the DFG-funded Subject Information Service for Classical Studies, the GBD was migrated to B3Kat, the joint union catalog of the Bavarian Library Network (BVB) and the Cooperative Library Network Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV), in 2016-2018. Thus, since April 2018, the new acquisition system evaluates all new acquisitions that have been cataloged in a BVB or KOBV library. Title data from London will be added as a supplement. The search interface (https://www.gbd.digital) provided by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München(BSB) enables up-to-the-minute access to the collected data, which is also fed into the PropylaeumSearch metasearch.

The GBD is constantly being developed further and the data stock is being expanded. Improvements implemented in recent years include:

• For approximately 65,000 review records from the migrated legacy data, a link to the reviewed work was created, allowing navigation in both directions.
• A comparison with holdings of the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and the library of the Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy made it possible to close approximately 32,000 holdings gaps.
• Based on a statistical evaluation, the selection filter for the new entry was improved. The number of new acquisitions selected monthly in the B3Kat could thus be more than doubled while maintaining the same accuracy.
• The link with personal standard data was expanded further. In this context, numerous new GND personal records were also created.
• The standard data display (compass symbol in the full title display) shows further information on GND terms and enables users to search for personal standard data.
• Hits can be roughly filtered to titles that are available online.
• Improved sorting for multi-volume works and journal articles.
• Realization of a multilingual search interface in German, English, French, Italian and Spanish.
• Using a process of automated language recognition, it was possible to add publication language information for almost all legacy data. A corresponding filtering of the hits is possible via the faceted search.

Work is currently underway to match data with the major digital journal archives, which will also enable direct linking of articles. In addition, the GBD thesaurus is linked to other standard data.

The GBD was conceived at the end of the 1980s by Jürgen Malitz (Eichstätt), who is still the responsible editor of the database, since 2003 together with Gregor Weber (Augsburg). Furthermore, Andreas Hartmann (Augsburg) and Michael Rathmann (Eichstätt) also contribute to the publication. Since 1994, the project has been published on floppy disks and CD-ROM by the publishing house C. H. Beck, which is still associated with the project today. Since 1996, updating excerpts of the database have been made available on the Internet with the name Gnomon Online. In 2009, an agreement with the publisher C. H. Beck enabled us to make the entire database freely usable on the Internet. With the completion of the migration to B3Kat, all data in the open data playout of the union catalog (https://www.bib-bvb.de/web/b3kat/open-data) will also be available for free reuse under a CC0 license.

More detailed background information on the development of GBD, which also addresses the technical hurdles that had to be overcome in the last decades of the last century, is provided in German by: Jürgen Malitz: ConcEyst, GBD und NBE. Drei Computerprojekte am Eichstätter Lehrstuhl für Alte Geschichte. In: Andreas Hartmann / Gregor Weber (Publisher), Zwischen Antike und Moderne, Speyer 2012, 15-36, here 23-33. Online: http://doi.org/10.11588/propylaeumdok.00001419.

Eichstätter Kurier vom 19.05.2019 über die Gnomon Bibliographische Datenbank