Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Museum Data Service (MDS) officially launched this September 2024. It brings together over 100 million object records from 1,750 accredited museums and other collections across the UK, unlocking an invaluable resource for researchers, educators, curators, and content developers. 

The MDS is a collaboration between Art UK, Collections Trust, and the University of Leicester. At the time of launch in September 2024 there were of 3,129,798 records from 21 museums, with another 1,951,719 records in the pipeline. The MDS enables museums to easily upload and securely manage their object records, whilst making it easy for users to search and retrieve records across multiple collections and diverse databases.

This new project mirrors the Archaeological Data Service (ADS), based at the University of York, which was launched in 1996. Supported by AHRC, Historic England, the Marine Environmental Data & Information Network, Natural Environment Research Council, and Scientific Data, it been providing a similar free service for archaeological technical reports, projects, and databases for nearly three decades. To explore this database follow this link: https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/