A Framework for Sustainable and Scalable Cultural Data Integration and Analysis: Using the Large Dataset of the Museum Data Service

For as long as museums have worked together as a professional community, they have envisaged a day in which they could have a complete inventory of all the objects in their shared collections. A searchable national list of museum collections. Despite several false dawns, this dream has eluded the sector - thwarted by funding limitations, the complexities of leadership and ownership, and (of course) the technical challenge of designing an open, stable, usable, secure system. However, now, thanks to start-up funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, and on-going funding from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council, the new Museum Data Service [MDS] finally addresses this need, working to deliver a national service - at scale, and with a sustainable business model. A partnership between Art UK, Collections Trust, and the University of Leicester's Institute for Digital Culture, the Museum Data Service is a free service that aims to connect and share all the digital object records across all UK museums, large and small.