Abstract
Linked open data promises interoperability across cultural institutions, yet adoption remains uneven and implementation costs are seldom published. This paper documents three regional museum implementations, recording staff hours, vocabulary alignment effort and subsequent reuse. Reuse was concentrated almost entirely in a single aggregator; direct third-party queries were negligible over eighteen months. We conclude that the case for linked data in smaller institutions rests on aggregation partnerships rather than on open querying, which has implications for how such projects should be scoped and justified.