Data Enrichment and Discovery Improvement for the Five College/Historic Deerfield Museum Collection Management Commons

FAIN: PW-290464-23

Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst, MA 01002-2324)
Jessica Nicoll (Project Director: July 2022 to September 2023)
Tricia Paik (Project Director: September 2023 to present)
Tricia Paik (Co Project Director: June 2023 to September 2023)
John Davis (Co Project Director: August 2023 to present)

A project to clean and standardize data describing collections of six museums and representing 120,000 cultural resources, which would result in enhanced discoverability online, more equitable description, and improved sustainability of the resource. 

This is the second component of a multi-year, multi-phase project administered by the Five College Consortium in Amherst, Massachusetts. The project will refine and broaden new models of care and inclusion in the description of 120,000 cultural resources stewarded by the Five College and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium so they may be accessed by more members of more communities. A 2022 study of portal users revealed that more information, equity, accuracy, and transparency are required in search experiences. The project will meet these needs by drawing on the broad and deep humanities ecosystem in the Consortium and the vibrant Indigenous networks in the Kinetikiw/Connecticut River Valley and beyond to create Cultural Advisory Councils that will provide feedback and direction on subject access, harmonization of collections data, and reconciliation against controlled vocabularies. This will immediately enhance access and discovery.