As MDS continues to grow, it’s vital that museums sharing their data are able to influence the direction and functionality of the service. We’re very happy to have two new user groups – one made up of researchers – and another made up museum staff and volunteers. We’ve had our first meetings with both groups now and we’re really excited to continue working with them.
In this post, we introduce the museum professionals from a range of different museums in terms of scale, specialism and governance who are the first members of our Museums User Group.
Museums user group members
The image above only shows a snapshot of the people who contribute to the museum user group, but illustrates the mix of different museums and expertise we have represented. We have a number of people whose roles revolve around digital experiences and data management, but also curators and collections managers that have cataloguing and collections data as just a part of their role. We also have representatives from volunteer-run museums and museum development organisations.
In our first meeting we heard the importance of being able to get statistics out of the MDS as well as an appreciation for the role of the service in facilitating wider access to collections data without flattening its complexity too much.
If you are looking to join MDS, please do sign up to one of our Introductory sessions, or watch this short video before submitting an expression of interest.