Swiss Network for Controlled Vocabularies and Thesauri

For several months, a project group comprising representatives from Swiss museums, archives, and collections, as well as the Swiss Art Research Infrastructure (SARI), has been developing a concept for a system-independent network for the use of controlled vocabularies. The starting point is the daily work with vocabularies, terminologies, and reference data in the cataloguing and inventorying of collection objects. These are essential for standardising indexing, avoiding inconsistencies and ambiguities, and improving both the discoverability of information and the exchange of data across institutional and language boundaries. Since many institutions rely on their own historically grown vocabulary lists or differing reference data that are only partially coordinated with one another, the comparability and reuse of data is currently hampered – particularly in the multilingual context of Switzerland. The aim of the project is to substantially improve the quality, comparability, and sustainability of collection and archive data.