Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 58.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2026-06-16 12:37:14+00:00
From: Mia (will not see replies to gmail) <mia.ridge@gmail.com>
Subject: The first Museum Data Service newsletter, and a call for participation
Dear all,
Please excuse the cross-post! I wanted to reach a wider audience with
this first newsletter
<https://campaign.emailblaster.cloud/MTAxNTM/114.html>,
and highlight our call for self-nominations for the MDS' museums and
researcher user groups.
More information about our museums and researcher user groups is below or
https://museumdata.uk/blog/invitation-to-join-our-museum-and-researcher-user-groups/
but the important bit is - if you would like to be considered for one of
these groups, please send an email to support@museumdata.uk by June 30.
We’ll aim to confirm our selection by mid-July.
In some cases, people who subscribed to the newsletter in 2024 might have
moved on by now, or you might not have realised that we have a newsletter -
if that's you, you can subscribe at https://museumdata.uk/
Cheers,
Mia
Head of Service, Museum Data Service
June 2026 newsletter
Welcome to the first newsletter from the Museum Data Service!
We’ve lots of updates following our launch in September 2024 – new staff,
dozens of new museum partners, and various invitations to get involved with
the MDS.
Announcing our Head of Service and Technology Manager
You might have seen that Mia Ridge (hi, that’s me!) was appointed as Head
of Service for the Museum Data Service in April
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/museum-data-service-appoints-mia-ridge-as-head-of-service/>
on part-time secondment from the British Library.
We’re equally delighted that Technology Manager Sam Hall joined us in March
2026.
We’d like to thank Kevin Gosling for his vital contributions as handover
consultant, and Andy Ellis, Ross Parry, David Gelsthorpe and the MDS Board
of Trustees for their support.
Invitation to join our Museum and Researcher User Groups
We have three informal advisory groups
<https://museumdata.uk/about/governance/> who act as ‘critical friends’,
helping us stay true to our values and purpose while anticipating changes
in the museum, policy and technology landscapes.
We’ve already worked with early adopters who provided feedback as well as
data during the start-up project, but now it’s time to invite additional
voices. We’re looking for around ten additional members each for two of
these groups: our museum user group, and researcher user group.
In each case, the groups meet twice a year online at meetings attended by
the Head of Service, a member of the MDS Board of Trustees and MDS staff.
We’re looking to recruit diverse groups that represents a range of users.
Members can act as critical friends on matters such as user experience,
comms and messaging, training and other support needs, data ethics and our
future priorities.
For the museums user group, we’re looking for people from a range of museum
types, sizes, locations and roles. You don’t need to be an MDS partner –
we're also keen to understand the barriers some museums face in joining our
service.
For the researcher user group, we’re looking for representation across a
wide range of disciplines and industries, career stages, and types of
research.
Expressions of interest
If you would like to be considered for one of these groups, please send an
email to support@museumdata.uk.
In your email, please state which user group you’re interested in joining –
museums or researchers.
Please also tell us something (in up to 300 or so words) about why you’re
interested in joining that group, how you use or might use the MDS, your
location, type and size of institution, and the perspectives that your
experience and interests to date might bring to the group.
Progress update: funding, features and events
In August 2025, we secured three years of funding from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/additional-three-years-of-funding-for-mds/>.
We’re grateful to AHRC for its continued support, which has already enabled
stronger contributions to the UK’s research digital infrastructure. We have
also strengthened our relationship with N-RICH and other Digital Arts and
Humanities (iDAH) funded initiatives.
The MDS launched in September 2024 with 22 museums and about 3 million
records. 21 months later, we have over 130 museums nearly 7.6 million
records.
[image: A month-by-month line chart showing an increase from about 3
million to over 7.5 million object records by the start of June 2026]
Caption: Object records in MDS
As the number of records available via MDS has increased, it’s enabled a
huge increase in the number of artworks on ArtUK. By building MDS into the
process for adding new artworks, ArtUK hit 1 million artwork records in
February - just as they were celebrating their 10-year anniversary. Before
incorporating MDS into their process, there were just over 300,000 records
on ArtUK.
In December 2025, the South West Collection Explorer
<https://swcollectionsexplorer.org.uk/about-us/> launched with a
collections search powered by our API. They’re one of the first projects
showing how the MDS can support other digital projects.
We’ve been working on our website and APIs, including the launch
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/putting-uk-collections-on-the-map/> of a map
view of museums and their collections based on MDS data
<https://museumdata.uk/explore-collections/collections-map/>. This was aided
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/putting-uk-collections-on-the-map/> by our
first Wikimedian-in-residence, Andy Mabbett, and researchers Alex
Fitzpatrick and Xuewen Yang. More recently, Haixin Huang completed a two
week placement from UCL and wrote about her work checking for new museum
records with the Mapping Museums Database, Excel and OpenRefine
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/checking-for-new-mds-museum-records/>.
Finally, we’re looking forward to presenting on the MDS at conferences
including:
- The Museums Association’s Future of Museums: Empowering Collections
<https://www.museumsassociation.org/events/future-of-museums-empowering-
collections/>
event on 17 June 2026 at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
- The international Digital Humanities 2026 conference
<https://dh2026.adho.org/> in July in Daejon, South Korea.
Now’s a great time to join the MDS
If you’ve been thinking about signing up to MDS, or finding out more about
what’s involved, now’s an excellent time to send us an Expression of
Interest
<https://museumdata.uk/sharing-data/express-interest-in-sharing-data/>.
If you want to find out more about the MDS first, you can watch an informative
talk by our Museum Data Manager Arran Rees
<https://museumdata.uk/blog/mds-showcased-at-digital-research-infrastructure-
dri-webinar/>,
or attend an Introduction to MDS <https://museumdata.uk/events/>.
Introduction to MDS sessions, online
We have three MDS introduction sessions planned over the summer; each an
hour long. The sessions are designed to give an overview of what type of
data is in the Museum Data Service and help museums understand the joining
process. We have sessions planned on 24 June, 23 July and 25 August, all
starting at 11am.
Book onto a session via the events page on our website:
https://museumdata.uk/events/
Research collaboration opportunities
Small grants scheme – UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association
The UK-Ireland Digital Humanities Association are running a pilot small
grants scheme for early-career researchers and early-career practitioners
working in the GLAM sector. If you have an idea for a project that would
involve data from the Museum Data Service, do let us know!
More information on the grants available here:
https://digitalhumanities-uk-ie.org/2026/05/01/2026-small-grants-scheme/
But act fast – the call closes on 19 June 2026.
Finally - share your stories!
We’re aiming to send this newsletter about six times a year, but we don’t
want it to be all about us – we'd love to share your news too. Has the
Museum Data Service already made a difference to you in some way? We’re
looking for museums with stories we can feature on our blog, social media
and in this newsletter, or just to learn more about how the MDS has helped.
Get in touch at support@museumdata.uk.
Thanks for reading to the end! If you have any feedback or requests for
content, please let us know.
Cheers,
Mia
Head of Service, Museum Data Service
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