German Sales Institutions - Auction houses, galleries, antique book shops (GSI)
A database-supported information system is currently being set up in Heidelberg under the title "German Sales Institutions - Auction Houses, Galleries, Antiquarian Bookshops", which will record the company data of the approx. 380 auction houses (1901-1945) in a first step whose catalogues have so far been digitized in "German Sales". The "Wissenschaftliche KommunikationsInfrastruktur (WissKI)" (Scientific Communication Infrastructure), a virtual research environment that enables the development of applications in the field of digital humanities using current standards, is being used to meet the requirements of art market research.
The data model on which the database is based was developed in Heidelberg specifically for recording companies of the art trade and is currently being modeled in WissKI. In addition to the recording of company names, addresses, involved actors (owners, managing directors, appraisers/experts, auctioneers, curators, etc.), thematic focuses and company-historical information, a linkage of the company records with the digitized publications as well as external sources and further information on projects, etc. is planned. The semantic, ontology-based indexing aims not only to visualize the networks of the actors, but also to make the content stored in a TripleStore available in RDF/XML format for other projects in the sense of Linked Open Data.