Wiltshire Museum and Wessex Museums wish to procure an open source system to enable cross-searching and display of data from the collections management systems of the four Wessex Museums partners – Dorset Museum, Poole Museums, Salisbury Museum and the Wiltshire Museum. This is supported by funding from Arts Council England (ACE).

The intention is to export data from the museum collections management systems into a data repository, to create interfaces to enable search and presentation of object records and to use those object records to create online exhibitions.

The Virtual Collection is planned in the context of FAIR principles, the AHRC Towards a National Collection initiative and the work of the Collections Trust. As these initiatives come to fruition, it is intended that the open source tools developed through this procurement can be adopted by a wide range of museums to reduce the barriers in enabling online access to collections.

This procurement is being managed by Wiltshire Museum, in partnership with the Wessex Museums Trust.