Museum Data Service launches in the UK

The Museum Data Service (MDS) is a free new service that aims to connect and share all the object records across all UK museums, large and small.

A collaboration between Art UK, Collections Trust, and the University of Leicester, it represents the realisation of a vision first conceived over a century ago. In 1888, curators proposed the idea of a “compendious index” to document the contents of museums nationwide. Over 100 years later, this vision has been realised through digital innovation, overcoming the historical challenges of disparate and often inaccessible offline databases.

This ambitious initiative will provide a platform to bring together over 100 million object records from 1,750 accredited museums and other collections across the UK, unlocking an invaluable resource for researchers, educators, curators, and content developers.

Launching with an initial collection of 3,129,798 records from 21 museums, and with another 1,951,719 records already in the pipeline, the MDS is set to revolutionise the way museum data is managed and accessed. By creating a single, unified platform, the MDS enables museums to easily upload and securely manage their object records, whilst making it easy for users to search and retrieve records across multiple collections and diverse databases. This service is designed to be accessible for all museums, regardless of size, providing an inclusive and sustainable way to share and preserve the UK’s cultural heritage.

While the MDS is primarily designed for institutional use, its impact will be far-reaching. Researchers in digital humanities will have unprecedented access to large-scale data sets, museum curators will find it easier to research objects for exhibitions, and developers will be able to transform raw data into engaging content for the general public. Meanwhile, short overviews of each collection will act as discoverability aids. The MDS also serves as a critical backup resource, especially for smaller collections that may lack robust digital infrastructures.

The development and sustainability of the MDS have been made possible through support from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Digital Accelerator Programme and the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s iDAH programme.