The AAT, ULAN, and TGN are currently available for licensing in three formats: XML, relational tables, and MARC. Sample data may be downloaded from this page free of charge.

Licensing: The Getty vocabulary data is copyrighted by the J. Paul Getty Trust. All rights reserved. Your institution must sign a license and pay the required fees in order to use the data. The data is compiled from various contributors using published sources, which must be cited along with the J. Paul Getty Trust when the data is displayed.

The data files are released annually, in July or slightly earlier each year (barring unforeseen technical difficulties). If you wish to license multiple vocabularies, you must obtain a separate license for each one. Licensing agreements are for a fixed five-year term; annual data updates are now being offered free of charge during that five-year term. The license fee must be paid and the license agreement signed prior to the transfer of data. At the end of five years, you may renew your license for an additional five-year term upon payment of a fee. Thousands of records are updated or added each year; users are advised to update their data annually. Contact us at vocab@getty.edu, subject line: Licensing, to learn the amount of the fees and terms of licenses. Please include an explanation of how you intend to use the data and whether your institution is for-profit or not-for-profit.

Formats of future releases: For releases beginning in 2009, we plan to release the data in XML only, discontinuing the MARC and Relational Tables formats. If you have comments regarding this proposed change, please contact us at vocab@getty.edu. With this change, we will also institute Unicode in our data, replacing our $xx diacritic codes. We will then release the data in XML UTF-8 format only. We will provide instructions regarding how to change the XML into relational tables or MARC records.

Data dictionaries: Data dictionaries are available by clicking the links below. The documentation does not give step-by-step instructions on how to construct a database or interface based on the data files; analysis and a competent programmer will be required to implement the vocabulary data files. The Getty does not provide technical support.

Persistent IDs: We are pleased to announce a significant improvement in our data releases. We have implemented new functionalities in our editorial system that will result in more persistent IDs for our vocabulary records. Previously, although each record had a unique numeric ID, the ID would change when new records were "merged" with existing records, and in other rare situations. While licensees of Getty vocabulary data received annual mappings of old IDs to new ones, our user community was anxious to have a more persistent ID for the Getty vocabulary records over time. The new merge process, implemented in January 2008, will result in the ID of the original vocabulary record being maintained when a new record is merged into it. Other editorial situations may occasionally require the generation of new IDs (e.g., when one existing record is divided into two records); for these rare cases, a mapping of the old IDs to the new ones will continue to be published with the annual releases. Details of this improved maintenance of a persistent ID will be published with the licensee documentation for the 2008 data releases.

APIs: The Getty Vocabulary Program, together Getty Information Technology Services (ITS), is developing a set of Web services APIs (application programming interfaces) to enable access to the most up-to-date version of the Getty vocabulary data in real time. The APIs are slated to go online in 2009. API updates (pdf).

Data currently available: The data currently available for licensing was cut in May 2008; the next release is scheduled to occur in July 2009, or slightly earlier.

Download sample records from the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), a hierarchical vocabulary of around 34,000 records, including 131,000 terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, archaeology, and other material culture. The sample available here is a small subset of the AAT. The full XML data file for the AAT is 17,323 kilobytes in size. For further information, see About the AAT.

AAT Sample Data Format options:		Data Dictionary for the AAT Data Release
XML		XML format PDF
Relational Table		Relational Table format PDF
MARC		MARC format PDF

Download sample records from the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), a vocabulary of around 120,000 records, including 293,000 names and biographical and bibliographic information for artists, architects, firms, shops, and art repositories, including a wealth of variant names, pseudonyms, and language variants. The sample available here is a small subset of the ULAN. The full XML data file for the ULAN is 65,062 kilobytes in size. For further information, see About the ULAN.

ULAN Sample Data Format options:		Data Dictionary for the ULAN Data Release
XML		XML format PDF
Relational Table		Relational Table format PDF
MARC		MARC format PDF

Download sample records from the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), a hierarchical vocabulary of around 912,000 records, including 1.1 million names, place types, coordinates, and descriptive notes, focusing on places important for the study of art and architecture. TGN is not a GIS; coordinates are included for many records, but they are for finding purposes only (i.e., to find the place on a map). The sample available here is a small subset of the TGN. The full XML data file for the TGN is 117.066 kilobytes in size. For further information, see About the TGN.

TGN Sample Data Format options:		Data Dictionary for the TGN Data Release
XML		XML format PDF
Relational Table		Relational Table format PDF

Data is copyrighted: The Art & Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT), the Union List of Artists Names ® (ULAN), and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names® (TGN) are copyrighted by the J. Paul Getty Trust. Companies and institutions interested in regular or extensive use of the vocabularies should explore licensing options by sending an email to vocab@getty.edu.

No warranties by Getty: The databases are provided "as is." Getty disclaims all other warranties, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, with respect to the databases.