The L1000 dataset from the NIH LINCS program holds the promise to deconvolute a wide range of biological questions in transcriptional space. However, using this large and decentralized dataset presents its own challenges. The slinky package was created to streamline the process of identifying samples of interest and their corresponding control samples, and loading their associated expression data and metadata. The package can integrate with workflows leveraging the BioConductor collection of tools by encapsulating the L1000 data as a SummarizedExperiment object.