07 — Where we're honest with you

What this is not, and what it asks of your team.

We'd rather lose the engagement than have you discover this in month four.

Needs your specialists

Your specialists’ time is the real cost of the engagement

Not our fees — their calendars. Expect senior curators, librarians and archivists in working sessions on a regular rhythm. If that time can't be committed, the work will not hold.

Does not replace scholarship

Only your own specialists promote a claim to an established fact

The system holds claims and their evidence. It never adjudicates — a curator or a subject librarian does. Anyone telling you a machine can do that research is selling you a liability.

Not a quick fix

This is a design exercise before it is a technology one

The hard part is getting departments to agree on terminology they have each held privately for decades. No product shortcuts that.

Not a body shop

We won't run this as an outsourced digitisation project

If you want a firm to go away and return with a finished knowledge graph, we're the wrong partner — and that deliverable tends to be abandoned within a year anyway.

Deliberately narrow

We don't do institution-wide big-bang programmes

One collection, one enquiry, end to end — then widen. Modelling everything at once is how these projects die.

08 — Start the conversation

If this is close to what you have been thinking, let's find a time.

90 minutes. Bring your curators or librarians, and one question your institution couldn't answer.

Received. We'll reply within two business days to find a time.

Or write directly — hello@neogens.co