A project to connect and share UK museum object records has appointed Mia Ridge, a digital curator at the British Library, as its head of service.
The Museum Data Service (MDS) was launched 18 months ago to bring together more than 100 million object records from 1,750 UK accredited museums and other collections. The initiative, which currently shows 7.4 million object records from 207 accredited museums, is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Ridge, part of the digital research team at the British Library, joins the Museum Data Service this month on secondment. She leads projects and provides advice and training on computational research, AI/machine learning and crowdsourcing with cultural collections.
Ridge said: “I'm on record as a fan of the MDS – a service so simple and compelling in its vision to connect and share museum records across the UK that it's hard to believe it hasn't always existed.
“This appointment complements my work at the British Library, where I've had incredible opportunities to lead projects at the cutting edge of digital scholarship and collaborate with international experts in digital cultural heritage and the digital humanities.
Advertisement
"It also brings me back to my roots as a museum technologist advocating for open and accessible cultural data, and designing platforms for digital participation.”
MDS is designed to enable museums to easily upload and securely manage their object records. As a single, unified platform, it allows users to search and retrieve records across multiple collections and diverse databases.
This service is designed to be accessible for all museums, regardless of size, providing an inclusive and sustainable way to share and preserve the UK’s cultural heritage.
MDS is a collaboration between Art UK, Collections Trust and the University of Leicester’s Institute for Digital Culture.
