Exploring Collections as Data: The Sloane Lab. Looking Back to Build Future Shared Collections

Abstract

The Sloane Lab seeks to integrate historical and contemporary cataloguing systems for Sloane’s collections, tackling challenges of data integration and cultural sensitivity by collaborating with communities to develop a Knowledge Base that supports decolonized, multivocal, and contextually enriched access to the collection’s information. In this HERMES Open Colloquium session Prof. Dr. Julianne Nyhan (TU Darmstadt) and Dr. Andreas Vlachidis (UCL London) provide insights into the design and development of the Sloane Lab Knowledge Base, detailing modelling choices, semantic and vocabulary priorities, and the challenges faced in data aggregation, such as data disparity, integration complexity, conflicting and inconsistent information, uncertainty, and data gaps.