Case Study: Vanderbilt University achieves secure, scalable research analytics with Databricks

Deriving meaningful insights for research and policy impact

Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries needed a better way to provide access to massive research datasets, including the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, so faculty and researchers could use advanced analytics and NLP to study decades of broadcast news alongside other sources. Before Databricks, limited transcripts, data access, and scale made complex, cross-dataset research difficult.

Using the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform, Vanderbilt University transcribed its video archive and enabled secure access for researchers to run machine learning and advanced analysis at scale. Databricks helped the university combine TV news data with polling, policy, and other datasets, improving research productivity and enabling new insights; the archive now supports more efficient, secure analysis of digitized media and broader research use.

Vanderbilt University

Jon Shaw

University Librarian