Collections Trust to catalogue Scottish university museum holdings

The Collections Trust has announced a new partnership agreement with Scottish university museums. The following is the press release:

The Collections Trust and Scottish university museums have announced a new partnership to make collections available online using the Culture Grid.

The partnership will support University Museums in Scotland (UMIS) in a £318,000 project led by the University of Aberdeen to electronically record their holdings through collection-level descriptions, item records, and photography of select objects. Funded by the Scottish Funding Council, Revealing the Hidden Collections will record the collections of the universities of Dundee, St Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Heriot-Watt, Robert Gordon, and the Glasgow School of Art.

The collections data will be uploaded to the Culture Grid, a service run by the Collections Trust which pulls together information from museum, archive and library websites and databases and serves it up to media partners such as Google and the BBC.

Amy Miller, Project Officer for Revealing the Hidden Collections, commented, 'The internet is now an important research tool, for school children, academics and those with an interest in a particular subject but currently they have few ways of discovering what we hold, or viewing it. This partnership means that the world class collections held by Scottish university museums will now be accessible for use and enjoyment by everyone.'

Nick Poole, Collections Trust Chief Executive, commented, 'UK museums, libraries and archives are treasure-houses of rich digital content about our shared heritage. Projects like Revealing the Hidden Collections really show the power of opening up these resources for the public to share, enjoy and learn from. The Culture Grid provides a fast, simple and sustainable way of connecting people to these unparalleled resources. We're delighted to be part of this important initiative.'

The Revealing the Hidden Collections project is one of many contributors to the Culture Grid. The system currently holds over 730,000 item records from over 50 different collections of national, regional and local scope from museums, libraries and archives, with many thousands more due to be added in the coming months.

Further information about the Culture Grid, including details of how to get involved, is available on the Collections Trust website at www.collectionstrust.org.uk/cultregrid.

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Scotland's Greatest Story
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