AHDS Timeline 1995 - 2006

You can also read about the
first 10 years of the AHDS
(external link).

The AHDS collects, preserves and promotes electronic resources in the arts and humanities.

What is the AHDS? | How is it organised? | What does it offer?

Directions to the AHDS Executive

Contact details for the AHDS Centres can be found below

You can search or browse for all collections deposited with the AHDS.

The Arts and Humanities Data Service is a UK national service funded by the JISC and AHRC to collect, preserve and promote the electronic resources which result from research and teaching in the arts and humanities.

By preserving collections made in the arts and the humanities, the AHDS encourages research and educational use of its collections and makes information about them available through online catalogues.

The identification and promotion of shared standards is critical to the AHDS's work. Preserving and exchanging digital information relies upon their widespread adoption and so does a more integrated approach to resource discovery which may help our users to find the resources they require irrespective of where they are located or how they are stored.

The AHDS seeks the widest possible collaboration in identifying such standards and documents and promotes these in its Guides to Good Practice, and its Information Papers. Via a strong national training programme and a range of other user services, the AHDS also promotes awareness amongst a number of UK communities about the importance and value of electronic information and provides guidance in its effective creation and use.

Finally, the AHDS facilitates fruitful partnerships between those communities in order to enhance the production and preservation of high-quality digital resources, and to provide more uniform access to them.

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The AHDS was established as a geographically distributed service comprising a managing Executive and a number of AHDS Centres devoted to archaeology, history, literary, linguistic and other textual studies, the visual arts, and the performing arts. The Centres collect, preserve, catalogue, and distribute digital resources which are relevant to their subject areas, facilitate good practice in their creation and use, and offer some user services. They also contribute to the Service-wide initiatives documented here.

For queries relating to interdisciplinary work, other arts and humanities subject areas or general enquiries please contact the AHDS Executive

The Executive co-ordinates the work of the AHDS Centres, ensures the development of coherent collection, curatorial, and distribution policies, and takes responsibility for all Service-wide initiatives, reporting to a Management Board and a Joint Consultative Committee. Located on Drury Lane, in Central London at King's College London, the Executive benefits from the generous support of the Library, the Computing Service, and the School of Humanities, and from the presence at King's of the internationally recognised Centre for Computing in the Humanities, the AHRC-funded Methods Network and several major computer-based humanities research projects.

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• A substantial collection of electronic texts, databases, images, and mixed media resources of relevance to arts and humanities disciplines.
• Provides information about similar resources which are located and managed elsewhere.

• Free or at-cost access to all services for the Higher and Further education communities and many resources are also made freely available nationwide.
• Expert guidance on the creation and scholarly use of digital materials.
• Professional cataloguing and documentation of digital resources.
• Expert information on resource availability and usefulness.

• Archival and distribution management services.
• Cataloguing and documentation of digital resources to recognized standards.
• Long-term preservation of resources.
• Guaranteed usability across technological change.
• Free promotion and publicity for education resources, using well-established and recognized channels and training techniques.

• Maximizing investment in resource creation
• Continued accessibility for community-created resources
• Expertise in the development and application of key standards
• Provision of guidance in our areas of specialization in the publication series Managing Digital Collections and Guides to Good Practice
• Research and consultancy

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Page last modified: 16th December 2005 by Alastair Dunning
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