On November 7th, Art UK (in conjunction with Collections Trust and the University of Leicester) introduced the Museum Data Service at the 2023 Museums Association conference, with the beta version of the MDS core system set to become available at the end of November for collections to deposit their data. The information site for MDS has also launched at https://museumdata.uk.
The MDS offers UK museums, or museum-like collection the ability to share their object records with other museums and beyond, on their own terms. Data can be accepted in any format and MDS allows collections to keep full control over how records are accessed and reused by data consumers.
Art UK and Collections Trust have begun to receive expressions of interest from museums to sign up, with 29 organisations currently expressing interest or attending one of the MDS workshops. With 11 early adopters already onboarded, the next steps will involve onboarding the new organisations to MDS, which is projected to add 5.2 million records to the repository in the coming months.
Further development work continues, with a public interface to MDS planned for release in spring 2024 and the final stages of the transformation service that will allow Art UK to double the number of artwork records on its platform by June. Confirming the transformational importance of MDS, the Arts and Humanities Research Council has confirmed additional funding support to supplement that of Bloomberg Philanthropies. The full public launch of MDS with some 100 collections on board will be in May 2024.