Carnegie Hall Data Lab

Hello, World!

*Note: This post was first published on January 31, 2020 as part of our original CH Data Lab site.

A little about us

The Carnegie Hall Data Lab is a learning space to expand our understanding of information innovation through experiments with linked open data, semantic technologies, and data-driven strategies that leverage the resources of the Carnegie Hall Archives.

A primary goal of our Data Lab is to use Carnegie Hall’s rich historical legacy as a lens through which to share untold stories and examine hidden connections within the world of music and other domains. The flexibility of a lab structure allows us to try out approaches and solutions in a "R&D" environment.

Our investigations began in the work leading up to the 2017 release of Carnegie Hall’s performance history as linked open data and we are grateful and excited for the opportunity to continue experimenting. We hope to showcase what can be accomplished by a small staff of archivists who are motivated to expand their technical expertise.

Watch this space for updates about our experiments, posts about creating and taking the first steps with the Data Lab, and highlighting fun and interesting collaborations we’re working on.

Where to start exploring?

Check out the Experiments page. We are starting with 5 experiments that use Carnegie Hall’s performance history (as linked open data) and built-in tools from Wikidata’s query service and Google Charts to produce visualizations.

Each experiment is labeled with a control number, chdl-####. This numbers appears at the top of each experiment's page.

Below each experiment is its own Lab Report, which includes an overview of what we made, details about the why and how, and what direction our curiosity, research, and testing will go as a result of the experiment. A draft template of a Lab Report is here, along with a list of GLAM labs and resources we reviewed for inspiration for the site and the Lab Report contents.

Get in touch!

Have a suggestion for our next experiment or want to collaborate on a cool idea? Feel free to contact us! We will also be keeping an eye on #CHDataLab on Twitter.

Are you curious why we chose Hello, World! to welcome you to our first post? Read more about the phrase here.