Company:
Rockefeller Archive Center
Business:
Repository and research centre
Challenge:
Produce a Knowledge Graph from
unstructured content of Rockefeller’s
physical paper documents, dating
from 1932 to 1941.
Solution:
A knowledge graph powered by
Hume and Neo4j.
Results:
Digitalised, structured content, ready
for analysis.
Over 10,000 physical typewritten documents from 1932 to 1941 had to be digitised, structured, and connected in order to create a
single, centralised source of knowledge, for enabling the analysis of historical processes.
The Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) is a major repository andresearch centre for the study of philanthropy and its impact throughout the world. The specific research project revolves around the process of grantmaking, the distribution of funding, the formation of intellectual networks and the transfer and adoption of knowledge.
The RAC wanted the capability to swiftly obtain answers to inquiries such as: “Are there any patterns that typically precede the funding of an idea?” and “Do granted projects tend to run through recommendations of influential scientists or previous grantees?”. In order to achieve this, the historical records were brought to life via complex machine learning pipelines, to extract the wealth of knowledge within and modelling it as a knowledge graph.
The project was launched to create a model that could demonstrate how structured data created from analogue, textual records can support a broader range of historical researchers working in quantitative methodologies. With many of the organisations whose records are held by the archive transitioning to paperless and digital platforms, the project was initiated to enhance ways of using historical records.
The Rockefeller Archive Center selected GraphAware as their vendor of choice due to the dynamic capabilities of the Hume knowledge graph platform and the experience of GraphAware data scientists with unstructured data.