1. Mission Statement

2. History of VADS

3. Services Offered and Availability

4. Funding

5. Service Operation

6. Help to Users

7. Relationship with Users

8. Usage Statistics

9. Events and New Developments

10. Publicity, Dissemination and Publications

11. International Work

12. Advisory Group Reports

13. Summary of Accounts

14. Future Plans

15. Evaluation Progress

16. Appendices

*14 May 1998*: Catherine attended a meeting with artists working in electronic media, to discuss the possibility of them depositing examples of their work with VADS. 

*19 June 1998:* Catherine met with Sue Price from the Courtauld Library to discuss possibilities future digitisation of the Courtauld Library special collections. 

*b) Presentations to small groups* at educational institutions to provide background information about VADS and the services it offers, for example:

*14 May 1998:* Janine went to Glasgow for a Pavilion Group Roadshow where she gave a presentation on VADS and our activities.

*9th December 1998:* Catherine and Phill attended a seminar organised by CTIAD at the faculty of arts University of Brighton, a presentation on VADS was given 

*c) Conference and workshop presentations* either on VADS, or on key topics of interest for example implementing digitisation projects, or locating and using networked art and design resources, for example

*10 September 1998:* Catherine gave a paper at the MDA conference on copyright and digital archiving and the role of VADS.:

*DRH Conference 1998*: Janine gave a paper at the on the User Needs Survey and Workshop which VADS ran earlier this year In the evening

*d) Outreach events* to keep abreast with new developments and increase the profile of the service

*11/12 June 1998:* Catherine attended a TASI/ELIB/NFF digitisation workshop in Loughborough. 

*28/29 of January 1999:* Catherine attended the MODELS workshop organised by UKOLN, on the . 

*22 Feb 1999:* Phill attended technical update visit, organised by TASI, at Kodak, on PhotoCD and Flashpix digital image formats. 

Deposits scheduled for accessioning

Imperial War Museum image database

Millais Gallery Archive

ArCade Website

Poster Images from Going Graphic, 5th - 19th April 1998, Victoria and Albert Museum

The Integration of New Technology into Ceramic Designer-Maker Practice, PHD thesis on CD ROM, by Katie Bunnell

University of Portsmouth Illustration Degree Show, 1998

Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Digitisation

Deposits in negotiation for deposit with VADS

Information base for the European Illustration Collection (virtual)

Iconographic Collection Videodisc Database

Design Council Archive digitisation

Art and Design Archive, Central St. Martins

National Arts Education Archive

African and Asian Visual Arts Archive digitisation

Fawcett Library suffragette banners digitisation

John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera digitisation

Lincolnshire Image Database system, Usher Art Gallery

VADS receives an average of 8 enquiries per week. These range from general enquiries from those interested in using digital data in research and teaching, to those contemplating the possibility of depositing data with the service, to specific enquiries about our activities, particularly workshops. Some of these enquiries are routed to us by other AHDS Service Providers and other agencies with whom we are collaborating. These enquiries are received either by phone or e-mail.

Usage statistics not available

This workshop resulted in the following report:

[User Needs Workshop Report] : --A report of the results of the VADS User Needs Workshop 28 - 29 April 1998, Edinburgh--

We held three other specific workshops - the VADS/TASI copyright series on the following occasions:

The service continues to receive many enquiries about this workshop and queries on copyright issues. Although we are not planning to run this particular event again, we are planning to make the materials available via our Internet Training Pool. Paper copies of the materials are also freely available on request.

The VADS catalogue has developed considerably this year. We are now cataloguing electronic collections using an Index+ database system developed by System Simulation Limited in conjunction with ADAM. Mappings have been identified and implemented from our AHDS Dublin Core compliant fields to those available at the AHDS gateway and therefore catalogued resources are searchable now from the AHDS cross disciplinary gateway. More information about our system is available at [http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/search.html]

We have also developed a working demonstrator interface to our first resource - the [Imperial War Museum Art Collection] . As the catalogue develops users will have the option of searching within any record at --item-- level across all our collections, as well as searching the specific fields pertaining to a given resource. This functionality has been innovated by Richard Levy at Affinity Vision and offers an increased level of functionality than that originally anticipated by us, especially given the disparate nature of the collections, both in format and structure, that we are accessioning. Once VADS' collections reach a critical mass, a launch event will be planned. We will also be organising user trials and evaluation to test the usability of the catalogue.

Collections development has been extremely encouraging this year. With the focus of the problems we face shifting from problems in identifying suitable resources, to problems in prioritising the delivery of the content we are acquiring. This is a result of two phenomenon, firstly our proactive collections building activities and the increased level of profile of VADS, and secondly a growing recognition in the visual arts community of the importance of digital preservation and archiving.

This year VADS and TASI held a highly successful copyright workshop series of three. The title of the workshop was --"Copyright, Rights Management and the new era of the digital image"--. It provided a basic introduction to copyright law and its ramifications for the electronic environment and more specifically digital images. It also based the materials around a series of copyright conundrums which addressed issues in the interpretation of the law in various scenarios. This sparked a lot of debate about what the law should be! Any questions we couldn't answer were kindly looked at by Professor Charles Oppenheim, who also vetted our materials for accuracy.

**In the autumn of 1998 we were sorry to loose Janine Rymer as our full time VADS officer, however within a short time span Phill Purdy joined the team as VADS officer. Shortly afterwards we recruited Gill Wallace to the newly created part-time post of VADS Administrator. Both new team members settled in very quickly, and the New Year saw VADS operating at a new level of energy (and hopefully) efficiency. We also began employing the services of Richard Levy of Affinity Vision as a technical consultant to work specifically on the mounting of the VADS on-line datasets. This partnership has worked very successfully so far.

**VADS consultancy has reached new levels of demand this year. Assisting data creators in the early stage of digital resource development is proving a valuable exercise for both parties, and creates a good relationship which will hopefully help in the standardisation, preservation and ultimately archiving of many of these digital datasets with VADS. A new development this year has also commercial publishers approaching VADS for consultancy services to help them develop digital resources. This is a promising sideline and we think also demonstrates a certain confidence in the knowledge and level of services we offer. We have also been advising a number of applicants to the new Arts and Humanities Research Board, which involves the fairly time consuming but valuable work of assisting with the production of funding proposals for the creation of new digital resources.

*Examples of consultancy include:*

*25 November 1998:* Catherine visited University of Sussex History of Art Department to offer advice on digitisation

*16 September 1998:-*Catherine and Janine, with Rebecca Bradshaw hosted a meeting with Chadwyck-Healey who are employ VADS as consultants on the digitisation of an image bank of illustrations from the National Art Library

vads@mailbase.ac.uk is an open list for discussion topics and delivery of information relating to the Visual Arts Data Service. Currently this list has 54 members, the majority of which, 35, are from the UK academic domain, while the remaining are a combination of those with UK commercial Internet access, commercial access from indeterminate countries, North American academics, and UK government employees.

*Conference Papers:*

*Seminar/Workshop Papers or presentations given*

*10th May 1998:* VADS/TASI copyright workshop

*14 May 1998:* Janine went to Glasgow for a Pavilion Group Roadshow where she gave a presentation on VADS and our activities.

*17 September 1998:* Janine attended a Pavilion Group Roadshow at Nottingham Trent University where she gave a presentation on VADS and the services which we provide.

*13 November 1998:* TASI/VADS/CTIAD Copyright Workshop, Brighton

VADS is producing four titles in the AHDS Guides to Good Practice Series:

Guide 1 will be published in the Autumn 1999, Guide 2, in Spring 2000 and Guide 3 in Winter 1999. The Virtual Reality Guide we expect to be published by Winter 1999. All Guide in this series will be published in electronic form in the first instance - with print publications by Oxbow books once the electronic version is launched.

*Surrey Institute Newsletter*(Spring 1998)
Article introducing the --Visual Arts Data Service-- plus team photo (Catherine Grout)

*Outline Magazine*published by CTIAD (Spring 1998) Reviews: --Art Theorists of the Italian Renaissance; A pre-release CD ROM published by Chadwyck-Healey-- (Catherine Grout and Janine Rymer)

*National Preservation Office Journal* (Autumn 1998) --Issues for Managing Digitisation Projects: a View from the Visual Arts Data Service (Catherine Grout)--

*MDA Conference Proceedings*, 1998 Copyright, digital archiving and the new age of the digital image (Catherine Grout)

In the past year we have disseminated approximately 1000 leaflets about VADS Services, 1000 training leaflets, and 500 Depositor's Packs at a variety of conferences, seminars, meetings and outreach events for the community.

International work has perhaps not been as high profile as last year. However we continue to correspond with digital archivist, librarians and curators in the States and Australia, and have added new members to our advisory group from international groups such as the Research Libraries Group. Consortium for Museum Interchange and OCLC. VADS staff have been invited regularly to take place in International conferences and workshops, however budgetary considerations have made this difficult this year. However it is hoped that the publication of our Guides to Good Practice will stand us in good stead within International forums forming data management and preservation standards, the activity surrounding which we have been observing diligently this year, if from a distance.

Our *Advisory Group Executive Committee* meets three times a year and steers the activities of the VADS team and the development of the service. The Executive Committee also acts as an formal evaluative body to assess the digital resources which are proposed for accessioning by VADS. Members of the Committee have undertaken the role of acting as the Editorial Board for our Guides to Good Practice. A list of Committee members is available in Appendix A, and the minutes of our Committee meetings in the past year in Appendix C.

The Advisory Group also has a *wider membership* which, although does not serve on the Committee, is privy to privileged levels of information about the Service. It encompasses a cross section of influential individuals from visual arts, museums and cultural heritage organisations who serve to advise, promote and provide effective representation and involvement of the community in the activities of VADS. For Advisory Group members see Appendix B.

*Year Two Summary 1/3/98 to 28/2/99

* Not available

Cataloguing resources at collection level using our client interface began in Year 2. Furthermore we have now accessioned our first on-line dataset, the Imperial War Museum Concise Art Collection. Once our data reaches a critical mass, we will organise a launch event for our catalogue. We will also launch our new website this year, which has been designed by James Hewitt of Nimbus Designs and developed by members of the VADS team. This will also allow us to re-stucture our materials and provide a more user friendly and graphically based interface to our publications and collections.

It has become apparent to VADS that a body of material in danger of loss and obsolescence is the degree show websites produced by art colleges and institutes nation-wide. It is often the case that once a year elapses and a new show takes priority the old data is not secured or maintained. As a result what could be a fascinating archival record both of the work of the stars of the future but also changing trends in website design (a creative media in its own right) will be lost to the future (suffering from broken links and inaccessible images). Hence POSSE - an acronym invented by John McKay, Head of Information Services at Glasgow School of Art. POSSE stands for "Preserve Our Student Shows for Eternity" and is the initiative that VADS is now launching to gather together, catalogue and deliver to the community a national archive of degree show material. VADS is actively soliciting the co-operation of librarians, archivist and webmasters to identify, collate and licence this material for use by VADS. Essentially what POSSE will provide is a secure home for degree show materials and also the chance to contribute to a fascinating archive, a great legacy to future generations. VADS is currently pursuing sources of funding for POSSE to allow us to employ a dedicated research assistant. However in advance of this work has already begun on bookmarking websites and identifying those in charge of them. A great deal of material has been identified emphasising the need for such an initiative.*
*

A great deal of changes will happen in 1999-2000, three of which are of particular interest and relevance to VADS, these are the launch of the new JISC Image Delivery Service with which VADS will strike a strategic partnership, the Creative Arts and Industries Hub of the Resource Discovery Network Centre and the HEFCE Subject Centre for Art and Design. These cross-service relationships are crucial to minimise overlap and to ensure that our mutual user communities are server proactively and collaboratively

We expect to Publish Guide 1, 3 and 4 in 1998 this Autumn, Guide 2 in 2,000. We expect this to make a considerable difference to the profile of our service and level of use. It will also make it much easier to respond to user inquiries*,* as reference materials will be readily available on-line.*
*

**It is anticipated that the whole of the AHDS will become a full JISC service, from August 2000. This will mean the formalisation of VADS as service offering both advisory and archiving services, placing the service on a more solid footing should also add credibility to our preservation activities.

This period saw VADS involved in extensive formal evaluation activities. Both the Interim and Final Evaluations of the AHDS took place in Year 2. The Interim Evaluation concluded in the summer of 1998, while the Final Evaluation concluded on the 26th February 1999. Both these exercises involved the following methods, firstly the submission of a lengthy self-evaluation report to the committee, secondly submission of letters from key contacts qualified to comment on the various services and activities VADS has been undertaking since its inauguration, and finally by Interview. William Vaughan visited VADS to evaluate us and report to the final review panel, who subsequently interviewed the AHDS service providers and their Director.

Overall this has been a highly profitable exercise for VADS, while providing a heavy weight of reporting, it has however also allowed us to hone our services and mission statement, providing a reasoned reflection on our broad remit, and also to make use of the invaluable input and support of an external review panel.

The next stage of our evaluation will be more informal and will take place as a part of consultation exercises among our community to assess our first guides to good practice and also the usability of our on-line resource delivery system.