03 — Why "we already have all of this" isn't enough

Your knowledge exists. It just can't be traversed.

The usual objection is fair: we have a collections system, an archive, published research, and specialists who know all of it. True — and every one of those is written in prose.

Prose can be read. It cannot be traversed. No amount of search will answer a question that has to cross four documents held by three departments in two vocabularies.

TODAY · READABLE, NOT CONNECTABLE Catalogue record Conservation report Donor correspondence Published research A specialist's memory RETIRES IN 4 YEARS NO PATH BETWEEN THEM · A QUESTION STOPS AT EACH EDGE CONNECTED · SAME CONTENT, AS RELATIONSHIPS COLLECTED WITH GLAZE MATCHES ACQUIRED VIA SHOWS USE The object ACC. 1974.221 Textile, another dept. 1998 kiln paper Donor archive Conservation file ONE QUESTION CAN NOW TRAVEL ALL THE WAY THROUGH
Nothing new was researched here. Every relationship on the right already existed in the institution — it had simply never been expressed in a form a question could move through.
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04 · Ontology & knowledge graph