Susan Gibbons
Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communication
Yale University
Robert Sanderson
Director for Cultural Heritage Data
Yale University
Yale University has developed a standards-based discovery platform that brings together collections from its museums, libraries, archives, and special collections. The system improves upon existing linked open data (LOD)-based infrastructures by seamlessly integrating full-text search with graph-based queries, and clearly demonstrates the value of connecting and enriching data across domain, organizational and institutional boundaries. The design and development process has equally enriched the institutional culture by connecting staff and departments in unforeseen ways, especially during the enforced separation of the early pandemic. The work’s impact continues to be pervasive through IT and collections staff, teaching and learning, bias awareness, and beyond. The session will include a presentation of the cross-organizational structures, processes, and norms that enabled success, the standards and data-centric approach to building the platform, and the systems that reconcile, enrich, search, and display more than the 40 million Linked Art JavaScript Object Notation-Linked Data (JSON-LD) records that describe Yale’s primary cultural heritage collections.
