Name Authority File

The Name Authority File (Personennamendatei) or PND is an authority file of people, which serves primarily to access literature in libraries. The PND has been built up between 1995 and 1998 and is published by the German National Library. For each person there is a record with his name, birth and occupation connected with a unique identifier, the PND number.

The PND comprises more than two million entries and is comparable with the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF). Since April 2012 the PND is part of the Universal Authority File (Gemeinsame Normdatei or GND).