FAIR vocabularies and authority data for museums and collections Edit

Controlled vocabularies and authority data are central to the reusability of object-describing data in museums and collections. This is why the minimum data set recommendation for museums and collections already contains important recommendations on the use of terminology in core elements of object documentation.

This report presents a range of relevant vocabularies for collection documentation, including resources that are suitable for specific documentation focuses and disciplines. It provides a brief description of the respective content focuses and the technical implementation status of the web resources, as well as a classification according to the criteria of the internationally recognized FAIR principles. This enables employees in museums and collections, along with those who reuse the data sets equipped in this way, to make an informed assessment of the sustainability of the vocabularies described in the contexts of networked publishing and effective research data management.

These guidelines were developed by a sub-working group of the Minimum Data Set Working Group of the Documentation Section of the German Museum Association (DMB). Its members are employees or representatives of the German Digital Library, Humboldt University of Berlin (coordination office for academic university collections in Germany), the Institute for Museum Research, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Philipps University of Marburg (German Documentation Center for Art History - Bildarchiv Foto Marburg) and the Central Office of the Göttingen Library Network (VZG).

This [source](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17950403) is currently only available in German.

@techreport{frech_faire_2025,
	title = {{FAIRe} {Vokabulare} und {Normdaten} für {Museen} und {Sammlungen}},
	copyright = {CC-0},
	url = {https://zenodo.org/records/17950403},
	doi = {10.5281/zenodo.17950403},
	language = {deu},
	urldate = {2026-01-30},
	institution = {NFDI4Culture},
	author = {Frech, Andreas and Gerber, Anja and Gnyp, Anna and Götsch, Stephanie and von Hagel, Frank and Kailus, Angela and Reichert, Rebekka and Schäfer, Domenic and Schlösser, Magdalene},
	month = dec,
	year = {2025},
}