Coherence in knowledge-sharing

A museum has provided a description of various collections in separate databases. It wishes to create a coherent knowledge-sharing environment for all its information. Users searching for a particular topic should receive as much information as is available in the system, including information that is even remotely related to the topic. No stored information should be inaccessible to them.

The collections are very diverse in nature. The databases were especially set up for the individual collections. If you want to store all the information in a single database, a Herculean restructuring effort would be required. Moreover, it will be difficult to find an efficient model that can be used to store all specialist information in such a general database. So would it be possible to link the existing databases instead and still retain all the information?

In short

• How can you efficiently and cohesively share the knowledge stored in different databases and still retain specialist information?