The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) is funded by the JISC and the AHRB to collect, manage, and encourage re-use of digital resources which result from or support research and teaching in the arts and humanities. The AHDS invites individuals, projects and organisations that are creating digital resources in the arts and humanities to deposit them with the AHDS and ensure their long-term future. The AHDS provides digital curation services, including management, preservation and delivery, through its Managing Executive and five specialist Centres.

The AHDS collects high quality digital resources of long-term interest to scholars and students in the Arts and Humanities. These resources may be created within institutions of Higher or Further Education, by museums, archives, galleries and libraries, by special interest groups, private researchers or by government and commercial organisations (subject to charges).

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Digital resources are fragile, and the time and resources invested in the creation of a digital resource can quickly be placed in jeopardy as hardware and software become obsolete. The AHDS follows, and contributes to the development of, international best practice in digital preservation and can provide active archival management of your digital resource, ensuring that media are refreshed and data formats are migrated as technology changes.

Digital preservation involves far more than backing up data, and even if you are sure your digital resource can be backed-up locally, it is still important to deposit a copy with the AHDS.

Many digital resources created in disciplines across the arts and humanities will have significant long-term value to the research and teaching community. By providing access through the AHDS, the full value and impact of your resource can be realised.

The AHDS offers a managed access policy, allowing depositors to specify who will be able to access their digital resource and for what purposes. All users are required to agree to our terms of use before they may view data or documentation.

The AHDS will professionally catalogue your resource, making information about it available through our own catalogue and other resource discovery services as appropriate. Your digital resource can be delivered to users through online delivery systems developed and maintained by the AHDS, and also on portable media such as CD-ROM.

By collecting, cataloguing and publicising high quality digital resources, the AHDS helps to provide tangible evidence of the scholarly effort involved in resource creation. Depositors also gain professional recognition when their digital resources are re-used in future research and teaching, and cited in publications. The AHDS encourages the re-use of deposited resources and actively promotes its holdings.

If you have received a grant from the AHRB it will be a condition of the award that you offer relevant data and documentation for deposit with the AHDS.

If you have received a research grant from the British Academy, the Carnegie Trust, the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Leverhulme Trust, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), or the Wellcome Trust's History of Medicine Programme you are either required or recommended to offer relevant data for deposit with the AHDS.

Digital resources that are offered for deposit to the AHDS will be evaluated to:

• Assess the feasibility of managing and preserving the resource
• Determine if there may be another more suitable archival home
• Consider the potential level of interest in re-using the resource

More information about the criteria for evaluating datasets can be found in the AHDS Collection Policies.

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We ask all depositors to sign the standard AHDS deposit licence. This is a non-exclusive licence that does not affect your rights. This means that intellectual property rights and copyright are retained by the copyright holder(s), and the AHDS is granted the necessary permissions to manage and preserve the digital resource. You can only grant these permissions if you are the copyright holder or are authorised to do so by the copyright holder(s). Copyright and other intellectual property rights must be clearly established before a digital resource is accepted by the AHDS.

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The AHDS accepts data and documentation in a large variety of formats. If possible, please supply your data and documentation in our 'preferred' formats. If you have data or documentation in a format not listed, please contact the AHDS to discuss how best to deposit your resource.

The AHDS is a purely digital archive. We cannot accept large volumes of paper or other physical material. The AHDS will create digital surrogates of any hardcopy documentation provided, and will preserve the surrogate but not the original.

Comprehensive documentation is very important if a resource is to be understood and re-used by individuals who were not involved in the creation of the resource. Documentation should cover the purpose, provenance, methodology, and outcomes of the digital resource.

If your digital resource comprises more than 50GB of files, it is helpful if you can contact us as early as possible to discuss the deposit.

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Academic projects funded by the AHRB are required to offer digital resources for deposit with the AHDS. There is no charge. AHRB funded projects can request funds to cover the cost of preparing data as part of their application to the AHRB.

Projects funded by the JISC, ESRC, British Academy, Leverhume Fund and other funding bodies that support Higher Education can also normally deposit at no cost.

The AHDS reserves the right to charge when a digital resource is deposited for preservation only. The AHDS may require the right to make a catalogue entry for the deposited digital resource freely available.

The AHDS accepts commercial data for deposit, but there will be charges. The AHDS may require the right to make a catalogue entry for the deposited digital resource freely available.

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As soon as possible. How you create and document a digital resource will affect how, and even if, it may be preserved and re-used. By contacting the AHDS you can gain professional advice and guidance about creating, documenting, disseminating and ensuring a long-term future for your digital resource.

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1. Contact the appropriate AHDS Centre (or the AHDS Executive if you are unsure) to check that your digital resource is suitable for deposit.

2. Produce copies of all the data and documentation files that make up your digital resource. The AHDS accepts data and documentation in a large variety of formats

3. Complete a Data and Documentation Transfer Form. The Data and Documentation Transfer Form is used to obtain all the essential information about the physical transfer of your data and documentation to the AHDS. If you have any difficulty completing it, please contact the AHDS for assistance.

4. Complete a Catalogue Form. The information that you provide on the Catalogue Form will be used to produce a full catalogue record for online catalogues. If you have any difficulty completing it, please contact the AHDS for assistance.

5. Complete, and sign, a Licence Form. Download, print and sign a licence with one of the five AHDS Centres.

6. Send the data, documentation and forms to the relevant AHDS Centre. The AHDS can accept material on a wide range of media, via FTP or by email attachment (only suitable for resources totalling less than 200KB in size).

7. Receive acknowledgement of receipt. The AHDS will acknowledge receipt of the deposit upon its arrival. This does not mean that your resource has been archived.

8. Receive confirmation of completed deposit. When we have completed the transfer of your resource into the AHDS digital repository (including data validation, cataloguing, and transfer to secure storage) we will contact you to confirm that the resource is now archived by the AHDS. The complexity of the resource will determine how long this process takes, but it is our goal to archive deposits within one month of receiving the deposit. If we encounter problems we will contact you.

If there is a reason for us to archive your resource very quickly, you will need to contact the AHDS to make special arrangements.

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AHDS Archaeology is hosted by ADS and is part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). Copyright 2003-7, last updated by NJ on 08/06/07. Email help@ads.ahds.ac.uk

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