Solving a century-old problem – Ross Parry explains the importance of Museum Data Service

September 2024 marked the launch of a landmark digital service within the UK’s museum sector.

The Museum Data Service (MDS), a spin-out joint venture between the University of Leicester and its partners Art UK and Collections Trust, was officially switched on at Bloomberg UK’s London headquarters on Thursday 12 September.

It is a transformative service that aims to connect and share the tens of millions of object records across all 1,750 accredited UK museums, solving the century-old problem within the industry of a lack of a centralised catalogue of collections.

In this special feature Professor Ross Parry, Director of the Institute for Digital Culture, talks us through the long road to developing the MDS and the lasting positive impact it will have.

What problem does the Museum Data Service solve for the museum sector?

For as long as museums in the UK have worked together as a professional community, we have envisaged a day in which we could have access to a searchable national list of museum collections. 

Despite the widespread digitization of collection catalogues in recent decades, it has not been possible to search, let alone work, across the estimated 80+ million object records spread across hundreds of museum databases – most of them offline. This has acted as a barrier to collaboration between museums, researchers and others, and a barrier to innovation in our understanding of collections.

Due to funding limitations, the complexities of leadership and ownership, and of course, the technical challenges of designing such a system, this has been a challenging dream to realise.

Thanks to start-up funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and now ongoing funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the new MDS will finally address this need, and deliver this national service – at scale, and with a sustainable business model.

It will unlock millions of records in museums across the UK, making them visible for research, for creativity, for inspiration – for everyone.

How does it work?

The MDS is a free new service that aims to connect and share all the digital object records across UK museums, both large and small.

Following FAIR principles, the MDS ensures that this data becomes findable: by ingesting millions of object records across the UK museum sector, and transforming these into web-ready datasets; accessible: by providing the sector with a trusted ‘back-up of last resort’; interoperable: by enabling cross-searching across the UK’s digital cultural record; and re-usable: by assigning a unique persistent identifier to every object for reference and long-term research

The MDS holds a scope of collection-related data, including institutions (the names of museums, linked to information about their location, opening times, etc), collections (descriptive summaries of the scope and highlights of collections), object records (item-level catalogue records drawn from museums’ own collections databases), and new and enhanced data (new content and enhancements linked to object records).

How did the University collaborate with other stakeholders during the development of the MDS? 

The MDS is an ambitious collaboration between Collections Trust, Art UK and the University of Leicester, with a shared vision of making museum collections more accessible and usable. Between us we have brought together the connections and community trust needed to build the MDS and unite the UK’s museums.

The University has been research allies with Collections Trust for a number of years. In fact, the origins of the MDS can in part be traced back to a nation-wide ‘Thinktank’, funded by the AHRC, ‘UK Museums and the Semantic Web’, that we led back in 2006-2007. As a long-standing and non-profit organisation which supports museums in managing their collections, they provided vital expertise and guidance on the needs and challenges of the sector. Utilising their deep understanding of museum operations, standards and practices has been essential in shaping the MDS.

Meanwhile Art UK – a digital platform showcasing public art collections – provided technical expertise in managing and displaying large-scale art datasets. Their experience in developing a similar platform for art collections proved to be invaluable.

Here at the University, we have a proven track record in delivering large-scale data projects. We engaged with a wide range of museums to gather the evidence that would ensure the MDS would meet their needs. We worked with researchers from a range of disciplines to understand the types of data they require, the tools they use, and the challenges they face in accessing museum collections. We also worked closely with key research bodies such as the AHRC to secure funding and support.

It has been an incredibly strong partnership of equity, combining the strengths of each partner to create a robust and sustainable platform that is tailored to the needs of the museum sector.

How will it impact museum operations, research and visitor experience?

The MDS will bring a host of long-term benefits which I am excited about.

It will enable the object records of museums and other cultural institutions to be better connected and more discoverable. Researchers from the rapidly expanding Digital Humanities research community, and a range of other disciplines, will have access to millions of data from museums, including institutions that would otherwise miss out on research collaborations. Smaller museums can also have their collections data securely backed up and be able to use it more easily for themselves.

It will provide opportunities for researchers, developers and users such as Art UK to test new approaches to data enhancement and discoverability at scale. Its ecosystem of tools and services will allow Collections Trust to work with others to address long-standing, systemic problems within the museum sector, including the difficulty of capturing and re-purposing content.

Ultimately, I see it transforming research in the arts and humanities, empowering museums to tell richer, more contextual stories, and enhancing the visitor experience by connecting them to a wider range of collections. 

I am excited to see it provide the digital standpipe to let decades’ worth of knowledge flow and grow.