Can the Museum Data Service set the sector’s records straight?

There is a lot that brings joy to those who work in museums – successful community projects, engaging learning programmes, beautifully designed exhibitions – but the thing that gets many people really excited is data, particularly data about collections.

So there was a lot of interest in the recent launch of the Museum Data Service, a project designed to transform how collections information is held, accessed and shared across the sector.

The launch marked the start of an ambitious drive to bring together more than 100 million museum records. Chris Bryant, minister at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is among those enthusiastically backing the initiative.

“My hope is that nobody will ever feel that a museum or gallery is not available or open to them,” said Bryant at the launch event in London.

“The Museum Data Service completely opens every door and every window in a way that no other medium could possibly do. Everyone will have that opportunity to find truly extraordinary and unexpected things that can incite curiosity and, in the words of Alice in Wonderland, become curiouser and curiouser. I think this is an absolutely brilliant project – and I know this is just the beginning.”

Bryant highlighted several objects in his speech, including a banner from Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales’ collection saying “lesbians and gays support the miners”.

This was made for the 2014 film Pride, and Bryant said the object had a particular resonance for him as a gay man as well as the Labour MP for Rhondda and Ogmore in south Wales.

It is one of the first batch of items added to the Museum Data Service, which was launched with an initial collection of 3,129,798 records from 21 museums.

Other objects highlighted at the launch included two very different helmets – one from the early days of commercial diving from Gosport’s Diving Museum, the other a late-18th-century cavalry helmet from Armagh County Museum.

There was also a DeLorean car from National Museums NI’s Ulster Transport Museum collection, a 1970s TV from Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum and a neolithic axe from Wiltshire Museum, Devizes.

The project, which is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council, will provide a platform to bring together object records from 1,750 Accredited museums and other collections across the UK.

Those behind the Museum Data Service say this will unlock an invaluable resource for researchers, educators, curators and content developers.

The basic problem that the initiative is trying to address is that it is not currently possible to search across the millions of object records spread across hundreds of UK museum databases.

This is a barrier to collaboration between museums, researchers and others, as well as a hindrance to innovation in the understanding of collections.

Many of the records are held on different collection management systems, often with conflicting field names. This is something the Museum Data Service will address.

The initiative – a collaboration between Art UK, Collections Trust and the University of Leicester – is designed to draw all this information together. The Museum Data Service is gathering detailed object records and turning them into data that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

Collaboration opportunities

For museums, the service should offer lots of opportunities for staff to work more closely and effectively with others.

“We really want to transform the way the museum sector works,” said Kevin Gosling, the chief executive of the Collections Trust, at the launch. “For too long, the information that people spend hours and hours creating has just been locked away. We want to free that up so there is better collaboration between museums.”

The Museum Data Service should lead to opportunities to share information with colleagues in the same institution, as well as the wider sector. Gosling expects it to have applications in areas such as knowledge management and the digital preservation of content.

This could include retaining and sharing information created for temporary exhibitions, for example. He also expects it to be used to help with decisions over acquisitions and disposal.

“In 10 years’ time, when we’ve got all the data from all the museums, we’ll be able to think more strategically about macro-collection management,” said Gosling. “The Museum Data Service will be a game changer.”

A key challenge of making the Museum Data Service a success is building trust. Those involved with the project have spent a lot of time on this, including creating a sound, legal framework for how the data is gathered, held and shared.

It has also been important to get the governance right. The Museum Data Service is currently a company limited by guarantee, but the intention is to convert it into a registered charity.

The charity will have three members – Art UK, the Collections Trust and University of Leicester – that will each have two directors on the board. There will also be a seventh director, who will act as the chair. This position is held by Katie Eagleton, the director of Libraries and Museums at the University of St Andrews.

“I’m independent of the members and the partners in the project – and I think that’s really important,” said Eagleton. “We’re all there together to steward the promise we’ve made to the sector about the shared digital infrastructure and to make it work for everybody, from the smallest to the largest museums.

“We’re establishing a strategic advisory board that will be made up of senior museum and research leaders, so we’re aligned with not just the priorities in the sector now, but how they change going forwards. We’re also putting in place a user advisory group.”

No image files

The sector already looks to be on board with the Museum Data Service, although there is the issue that the repository will not hold any image, audio or video files.

The partners say the costs are too high to do this, and it will be possible for the object records to include links to the locations of images that are stored elsewhere. This should allow users to see those images if they have permission to do so.

The Museum Data Service website states: “We’re aware that our no-images policy does not answer the need for sustainable and affordable cloud storage for museum images and other media, but this is a bigger problem than we alone can take on. We are lobbying for sector-wide solutions, as part of a national digital preservation strategy for the UK’s cultural heritage.”

Nevertheless, the launch of the Museum Data Service is a significant moment in the sector’s digital history and is already bringing joy to lots of people.