Networking of ressources relevant for Swiss history
Metagrid.ch is a project for the online networking of ressources relevant for Swiss history. This service allows the establishing, managing and analysing of links between identical entities (such as persons, organizations, places, …) from various websites and databases.
Why?
In every day work editors of data bases establish links to other websites. Thus, many historical research projects refer to articles of the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland. These links, however, have the disadvantage of being unilateral: a link refers from site A to site B and establishes accordingly a connection between two entities (f. e.: they refer to the same person), but only site A profits from this information. If site B, on the other hand, would like to use this information, the work already done has to be done again the other way around. Additionally, it is highly difficult to keep «static» links in html up to date. Metagrid.ch solves these questions in a simple and efficient manner by providing a web service that establishes links among data bases.
The participating projects
The participating projects of metagrid.ch optimize and simplify the managing of links and the updating of the existing data. Besides, each project profits from information provided by other projects. The projects also have the possibility to refer to other interesting sites by using widgets. Through this service, offered by metagrid.ch, the participating projects may increase their information and in the meantime extend their visibility.
Users
With this web service, users have a trustworthy source of information about further resources and research possibility at their disposal.
Metagrid.ch will be compatible with other existing standards for identification and data exchange (f.e. PND) and also be flexible enough to also work outside of these standards.