Double the Data, Twice the Discovery

ID: WMA2026_537

Track: Collections

In 2022, the Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement made the decision to integrate various state collections into one central database. With a CMS vendor selected, CCE began the ambitious task of migrating data from three major collections. This session explores the project’s successes and challenges, providing essential insights and practical advice for other institutions aiming to consolidate their historical and cultural assets into a unified, accessible public resource.

Session Information

Format: Regular session/panel (roundtable, single speaker, etc.)

Uniqueness: By migrating to a shared CMS/public portal, we demonstrated that unified infrastructure increases accessibility while allowing institutions to effectively pool resources and divide costs.

Objectives:

1. Increasing Public Access Attendees will learn how integrating into a centralized database with a public-facing interface prioritizes discoverability for their audience. We will discuss how a unified database transforms “hidden” collections into accessible public resources, allowing the community to engage with historical assets through a single search portal rather than fragmented legacy systems.

2. Engineering Collaborative Infrastructure This outcome focuses on the logistics of inter-departmental harmony. Participants will discover how to build a shared governance model that respects the unique taxonomies of individual departments while fostering a culture of data sharing. We’ll explore the “human” side of CMS implementation: aligning stakeholders, standardizing metadata, and ensuring long-term institutional buy-in. We’ll also address the economic benefits of this approach and how it can benefit other cultural institutions. 

3. Advancing Accessibility and Inclusivity Beyond mere digital presence, this session addresses the critical need for accessibility accommodations. Attendees will gain insights into incorporating WCAG-compliant standards and inclusive metadata practices during the migration and cleanup phase, ensuring that digitized cultural assets are usable for individuals with diverse needs and abilities.

Engagement: This session will address the nuts and bolts/takeaways of our own experience, but we hope to serve as a model for attendees and propose this as a solution to decreasing budgets and resources for collections care. We intend to leave a healthy Q&A time allotment for attendees.

Relationship to Theme:

Audience

Audiences: Curators/Scientists/Historians Registrars, Collections Managers Technology 

Professional Level: All levels 

Scalability:

This session will help smaller institutions find ways to “piggyback” on larger institutions, allowing them to access professional databases without impractical cost barriers. Mid-to-large organizations will better understand how to manage a multi-collection migration and distribute import and maintenance costs across multiple partners. 

Our project integrated collections across art, artifacts, and archives, and we believe the shared database approach is possible regardless of collections or organization type. Increasing public access to these collections will generally help museums with the ability to advocate for themselves, whether that be with funding providers or a more general audience.

Participants