The Guide

Every published record may name other published records it is related to: a book in The Library that a Gallery film adapts; the Lexicon term an implement in The Instrumentarium belongs to; the Archive piece that situates a tradition. Those declarations, taken together, are the Knowledge Graph.

A catalogue divided by medium will separate things that belong together. Without the graph, a rope tradition would live in five places and connect in none: a manual, a documentary, a term, a cordage entry and an essay on safety. The graph restores the subject without collapsing the collections.

A category places a record within its own collection: it answers what kind of thing is this? A relationship crosses collections and names a specific other record: it answers what is this connected to? Categories are hierarchies maintained by the institution; relationships are statements made by an editor about two particular records.

Search finds what shares a word. The graph records what shares a subject, whether or not the words agree — and it holds only relationships someone judged to be true. Search is a query; the graph is part of the record and is preserved with it. See Notifications & Search for what search reaches.

Relationships are declared editorially, in the editor for the record, by naming the target record and the nature of the link. They are made only between records that are Published and unmarked — a Draft, an Archived record or one marked Duplicate Of or Merged Into is not eligible; see Editorial Lifecycle. Links appear on the record's public page under its knowledge-graph section, and are revised as the catalogue grows.

• From a novel in The Library, to the Gallery film adapted from it, to the creator who directed it.
• From an implement in The Instrumentarium, to the Lexicon term that names it, to the Archive piece on its safe handling.
• From a Lexicon term, to the books in which it is defined, to the works that popularised it.
• From an author page, to Collections and Reading Paths that place their work in order.

Earlier practice was to link every occurrence of a Lexicon term wherever it appeared. It is no longer done, and the omission is deliberate. Automatic linking asserts a relationship no editor examined: it glosses a word in a quotation the author did not intend in that sense, it interrupts prose that was written to be read whole, and in member-written text — profiles, discussion, correspondence — it puts the institution's voice inside a member's words.

Editorial and user-written content therefore appears exactly as written. Every link a reader follows across the collections was placed by someone who meant it.