Carole Ann Fabian
Director, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library
Columbia University
James Shulman
President
ARTstor
Bill Ying
CIO and Vice President of Technology
ARTstor
This session will describe the inter-organizational collaboration of Columbia’s Avery Library, ARTstor, and the Getty Research Institute towards building the Built Works Registry (BWR), an open, shareable data resource for architectural works and the built environment. In 2010, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded a three-year grant to develop BWR. The project brings together these three institutions (each experienced in doing big data projects and each with separate and unique strengths) to collaborate on policies, standards, content aggregation, technical infrastructure, geo-location, and data exchange protocols. As a networked, distributed environment, BWR will allow contributors to participate in development and maintenance of this community-generated data resource. This large-scale inter-institutional collaboration is a model for how organizations can do more together now and in the future. By investing collective efforts and resources on common problems, we participate in crafting a future data system that will more efficiently and effectively meet community-wide needs.