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?]

AHDS Performing Arts collects, documents, preserves and promotes the use of digital resources to support research and teaching across the broad field of the performing arts: music, film, broadcast arts, theatre, dance.

Its target audience is performing arts researchers, teachers and students in UK Higher Education. AHDS Performing Arts collects digital materials to create an online resource base for research, teaching and learning and preserves those materials for future use.

AHDS Performing Arts provides advice and support to digital data creators and users in all performing arts subjects. AHDS Performing Arts has an interest in all types of resources related to the performing arts from digital versions of works themselves, representations or constituents of the works, materials about the performing arts and catalogue data.

AHDS Performing Arts is part of the [Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute] (HATII), directed by Prof. Seamus Ross, at the [University of Glasgow] , and is housed at HATII and within [GilmorehillG12] , a professional theatre and cinema venue and home of the [Department of Theatre, Film and Television] .

*AHDS Performing Arts
HATII
11 University Gardens
University of Glasgow
GLASGOW
G12 8QJ*

Tel: 0141 330 3549
Fax: 0141 330 3788
Email: [d.abbott *AT* hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk]

[Contact details for the other AHDS Centres] can be found below

The Arts and Humanities Data Service is a UK national service funded by the [JISC] and [AHRB] 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 Steering Committee. Located near Waterloo Station, 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] , 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 specialisation in the publication series Managing Digital Collections and Guides to Good Practice
* Research and consultancy

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