Introducing the Museum Data Service

Explore collections

We’ve brought together information about the scope and strengths of museum collections around the country. Together these summaries give the fullest guide yet to the UK’s wonderfully diverse museums.

Search objects

Here you can search across millions of object records from museums large and small: the raw material for research and countless other uses. This database will grow as we work towards gathering all object records from all UK museums.

About

The Museum Data Service is a joint initiative by Art UK, Collections Trust and the University of Leicester, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Get a quick overview of what we’re aiming to achieve, and see who’s involved.

Sharing data

Any UK museum, or museum-like collection, can be part of the Museum Data Service. We offer a free and easy way to share your collections data, on your own terms. Use us to open up your collection catalogue to everyone, or keep some things restricted to certain people only. You can even use us as a secure and confidential backup for all your collection data. Even better, we can take your collection in any format and however you can get it to us. It couldn’t be simpler.

Using data

We think it will take up to a decade to include all object records from all UK museums, but you can already search across millions of object records, and hundreds of collection summaries. In this section, we describe the scope of our data and explain how you can search and use use records from our databases, subject to licensing and other restrictions the source museums might set. As people start using MDS data, we’ll also post use case studies here.