Using data FAQs

Yes, you can explore collection-level summaries for over a thousand Accredited museums, and search across the millions of object records we’ve already brought together, via the Explore collections and Search objects landing pages.

Yes, you can generate a CSV file to download a summary of the object records resulting from a search. Just go the the bottom of the results page and click the ‘Downlad a CSV’ link. Please note that the CSV download output is restricted to 1,000 records, and includes only core fields that all records have in common. You can look up the full details available for each record via the URLs in the ‘link to MDS record’ column. A download button will appear below when the file is ready. Please ensure that your intended use of these records is permitted by the data use licences applied by the contributing museums, and refine your search using the data use licences filter if needed.

Yes. You can get an API token for any object search. At the bottom of the results page, there is a link saying ‘Get an API token’. Follow that and just fill in a short form that includes a declaration that you will respect the licensing terms applied to the records you plan to use. We’d love to know how you plan to use the data, so please give us a couple of lines that help us understand what users need from MDS. You can email the API token to yourself along with the query. The API documentation is on Swagger.

Subject to the licensing terms set by the source museums, most users will be able access and use MDS data for free. There will not be any kind of paywall on our part. However, we are developing a fair use policy and may well need to pass on any additional hosting costs arising from particularly intensive, high-traffic scenarios, such as very large research projects using our data on an industrial scale.

It will be up to each museum how often it refreshes data it shares with us. Where we’re taking data from a large museum via an API, it might be daily. For a small museum with a relatively static database, it might be once or twice a year.