Managing and Guiding a Cooperative Process for Collections Management and Public Access to Collections

For decades, the collections at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute had been catalogued and managed in a set of siloed, departmentally developed and managed systems. When it was time to move those data sets into a single, cooperatively managed software application, I was brought in to design the data migration strategy and manage the process. Working with registrars, conservators, librarians, archivists, subject matter experts, campus technology staff and others, I led the first two of a three phase effort that resulted in a shared information architecture, set of cataloguing standards, and integrated documentation practices. On the public facing side of the project, I led the participatory process to design the user interface and workflows for the Oriental Institute’s first effort at providing public access via an online research tool. Today, more than 850,000 object records are available via the online portal the brings together artifact, library, and archival collections. Visit the collections online!