iDAH- Consolidating the Museum Data Service as research infrastructure

Of the estimated 80 million object records held by UK museums, only 25 million or so are currently online. Of these, fewer still meet the requirements of the FAIR principles. November 2023 will see the beta launch of the Museum Data Service (MDS) that will, uniquely, address both problems, providing the raw material for anyone wanting to work at scale with collections data from UK museums.
Within five years, the MDS aims to bring together online, in one place, the object records of at least half the country's c.1.7K accredited museums, and almost all of them within a decade. Between them, the three MDS partners (Art UK, Collections Trust, and the University of Leicester) have the connections and community trust needed to achieve this goal and truly unite UK museums large and small online.
Moreover, the MDS (and the future Art UK 2.0) will ensure for researchers that this data becomes: Findable (ingesting tens of millions of object records across the UK museum sector, and transforming these into web-ready datasets); Accessible (for the first time providing the museum sector with a trusted 'back-up of last resort'); Interoperable (for the first time enabling cross-searching across the UK's digital cultural record); and Re-usable (for the first time a unique persistent identifier being assigned to every object - essential for reference and long-term research).
The MDS collaboration has start-up funding (via Art UK) from Bloomberg Philanthropies to the end of May 2024. The Bloomberg grant is building the core technical infrastructure and providing staff time from Art UK and CT to manage the project, and ingest collections data from the first 100 institutions. By the end of the start-up phase, the founding organisations will have jointly established a new non-profit company capable of taking long-term responsibility for the MDS.
The core MDS provides the raw material for researchers wanting to work at scale with collection data. WPs 1-6 of this iDAH proposal focus on consolidating the start-up service: more than doubling the number of museum datasets available; ensuring the needs of researchers are met; and refining the low-cost operational model key to long-term sustainability. WPs 7-10 focus on the greater, and costlier, challenge of transforming raw MDS data into an enhanced resource offering image-rich records and compelling related content.
In particular, building on the success of Art UK's present platform, the planning and design of Art UK 2.0 in WP 9 will show the potential for powerfully combining HE-designed tools and research outputs into a compelling audience-facing offering, of great value to members of the public and researchers alike, and one that underpins and demonstrates research impact.
The present proposal seeks AHRC support (via UoL) initially for the consolidation phase of the MDS to March 2025, taking it from start-up project through the first year of operation and outlining a roadmap towards steady-state and, ultimately, long-term sustainability for the MDS. The proposal underpins the success of the first major use case of the (raw) art data transformation service; enables Art UK to convert this service into a more generic tool allowing others to transform and enhance raw data from MDS for their own uses; whilst also laying the foundations for Art UK 2.0 and a framework for measuring ROI. While there is a timing overlap between the Bloomberg start-up project and the proposed AHRC-funded consolidation phase, there is no duplication or double-counting of funded activity; Appendix 1 delineates the Bloomberg investment and value added by the AHRC's funding.