Work and research relating to the AHDS' role as a digital archive.

As a functioning digital archive the AHDS performs and investigates many issues of relevance to the broader information science community.

As a preservation service, the AHDS has significant experience in ingesting and managing digital collections. In the preservation section of the website, plans and images outlining the mechanics of the AHDS digital repository, public editions of preservation handbooks (detailing procedures for dealing with various data types), and past documents reviewing AHDS management and preservation practices are all available to download.

The five AHDS Centres (Archaeology, History, Literature Language and Linguistics, Performing Arts, Visual Arts) are responsible for, among other things, accepting deposits from data creators, and managing the process whereby those deposits are prepared for storage and preservation. Each Centre describes this process in an Ingest Manual which follows the recommendations made in the 2002 AHDS Preservation Consultancy.

There is also a separate part of the website related to metadata and resource discovery

AHDS Preservation is managed by the AHDS Executive with input from the AHDS subject centres