A five-year programme will link the UK’s scattered museum, library, and heritage collections into a single, searchable virtual collection. The problem is fragmentation. A Roman coin in a local museum, a medieval manuscript in a university library, and a Victorian photograph in a national archive are currently invisible to anyone who does not know exactly where to look. Researchers, educators, and the public cannot easily discover or compare items held across different institutions, regions, or types of collection. This programme aims to break down those silos. If successful, the work could transform how people access the UK’s cultural heritage. A schoolteacher in Cornwall could search a single portal and find objects from the British Museum, the National Library of Scotland, and a small town archive in one go. The programme will also test public-facing digital displays with large audiences across the UK, ensuring the tools work for real users. The directorate will coordinate eight foundation projects and up to five larger discovery projects, commission additional research, and produce recommendations to ensure the work outlasts the funding. The goal is not a single building, but a unified digital window onto the nation’s collections.
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'Towards a National Collection: Opening UK Heritage to the World' is a five-year research programme funded under the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund. Led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the programme aims to benefit researchers and audiences of all kinds by making the UK's unparalleled museum, library and heritage collections increasingly discoverable as a unified 'virtual collection'. The programme will support two grant stages - eight small-scale 'Foundation' projects led by the AHRC's Independent Research Organisations (IRO) and delivered in partnership with UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI); and up to five large-scale 'Discovery' projects led and delivered by partnerships between the AHRC IROs and UK HEIs, with further collaboration with local and regional cultural, third sector or community organisations. The programme directorate will lead and co-ordinate the programme, ensuring that the range of funded projects work together in a complementary way to demonstrate the value of unifying collections across types and geographies, and creating public-facing outputs that can be displayed to, and tested with, large-scale audiences across the UK. In addition, the directorate will undertake and commission additional research that underpins or connects the portfolio of grant-funded projects. The directorate will lead on communicating the ambitions and achievements of the programme to both stakeholders and the public, and on making recommendations as part of ensuring a legacy for the work. The directorate will be based in Historic Environment Scotland and will comprise a Director, a Senior Digital Research Analyst and a Communications & Events Coordinator.
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