New LUX search tool offers unprecedented access to Yale’s vast collections

June 1, 2023

Yale University’s museums, libraries, and archives contain vast troves of cultural and scientific heritage that fire curiosity and fuel research worldwide. Now there’s a simple new way to make astonishing connections among millions of objects.

Starting today, anyone can explore the university’s unparalleled holdings online through LUX: Yale Collections Discovery—a groundbreaking discovery and research platform that provides single-point access to more than 17 million items, including defining specimens of dinosaur fossils, illuminated medieval manuscripts, paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and J.M.W. Turner, and the archives of Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein, and other renowned literary figures.

Free and easy to use, the platform—a powerful kind of database that maps relationships—helps users find clear pathways through the collections and uncover links between objects that might otherwise seem unconnected, such as a fish fossil and an 18th-century sketch of a young woman. Previously there was no easy way to search multiple collections at once or discern associations among the objects within them.

Read the full news story on news.yale.edu.