In March 2018, the Culture is Digital report was released, recognising that the UK holds some of the world’s most significant collections, and the power of digitisation to unlock these, expand the reach of the UK’s cultural assets and enable collections to be more than the sum of their parts.
The report included a commitment that “The National Archives will work with culture and heritage sector representatives to develop a new strategic approach to the digitisation and presentation of cultural objects, for example, looking at the common standards needed to make our nation’s great cultural assets more interoperable, discoverable and sustainable.”
A Digitisation Taskforce was set up for this strategic review, led by The National Archives, with membership from Arts Council England (ACE), BBC, British Film Institute (BFI), British Library, Collections Trust, Culture24, National Lottery Heritage Fund (the Heritage Fund), Jisc, Natural History Museum, Oxford University, Tate and the Wellcome Collection.