VADS services this year built on the prior year's significant collections achievements by providing seven new collections on-line, with a further ten major collections in accession / negotiation. These will soon be available via extensive new systems architecture (developed through VADS project work), which will greatly enhance the use of VADS image collections. This collections and systems work has been supplemented by a high level of engagement by VADS in the community, particularly in the area of data creator support, through continued involvement with Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) schemes and Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) visual arts 'image cluster' projects, as well as VADS contribution to the successful new AHDS workshops series. VADS support for data-creators has also greatly benefited this year through VADS' development of a standard-structured database for use by data-creators and the undertaking of the JISC funded National Fine Art Education Digital Collection Feasibility Study. The latter project directly manages the creation of a highly significant collection, defined as: 'works associated with and held within Higher Education Institutions, which represent the value and influence of the artist practitioner in Fine Art Education'. The project's success in its initial phase has led to extended funding from JISC to July 03. Finally, the end of the year has also ended on a high note, with the opportunity for VADS to work with other high profile collections. This includes the recent approach to VADS from the National Index of European Paintings initiative, led by The National Gallery and major university art history departments. In all, the year highlights the increasing profile of VADS as a quality delivery, archiving and advisory service.

i) Collections Development

" A notable period of collections development for VADS with the direct on-line delivery of the remaining visual arts collections from the JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI), VADS first 'virtual deposit', being explored with History Data Service, and a future rolling program of accessions of VADS-supported collections, secured for beyond 2001-2, which include the first AHRB funded projects in VADS area to complete and offer for deposit.

" 7 new collections in total delivered and promoted for reuse on-line, including 5 interdisciplinary image collections, providing access to an additional 4184 integrated visual arts image records. VADS image-catalogue now contains over 16000 records.

" John Johnson Political Prints
" John Johnson Trades and Professions
" Cental Saint Martins Museum and Studies Collection
" Women's Library Suffrage Banners Collection
" Imperial War Museum Spanish Civil War Poster Collection
" Glasgow School of Art 2001 degree shows
" Exeter Cathedral Keystones and Carvings

" 4 JISC funded
" 2 other academic
" 1 Cultural Heritage

Collections by AHDS subject areas

Subject Name Number
Archaeology
Ancient History
Classics
English Language and Literature
Medieval and Modern History 7
Modern Languages
Linguistics
Music
Drama and Theatre
Dance
TV, Film and Video
Philosophy
Religious Studies and Theology
Law
Art and Design 7
History of Art 7
Architecture 2
Media

ii) Collections Management and Preservation

VADS has prepared 5 image collections for delivery/preservation by mapping item level metadata into VADS' Visual Resource Association Core 3.0 based structure and maintaining copies of archival quality images.

" 7 collections prepared for use/preservation, including 4184 item level image records

" 7 collection level metadata records prepared plus online documentation in HTML and standards-enhanced metadata records of 4184 digital images.

iii) Resource Delivery

VADS has this year further developed its community preferred delivery policy of providing discreet digital objects directly on-line via user friendly systems. VADS specified and commissioned new systems architecture developments via System Simulation Ltd and The Institute for Image Data Research, at the University of Northumbria, under the PICTIVA project. This will provide enhanced access and retrieval tools for VADS image-delivery systems. VADS systems will in future provide for registered access; personalised image-set creation, annotation and dissemination; and visual searching of its fully cross-searchable image collections. Catalogue development has coincided with the continued development of VADS website.

VADS has also augmented its discovery/delivery system by piloting a VADS-produced client database with the London College of Fashion Cordwainer collection. This methodology which allows metadata to be created to VADS delivery standards may be expanded for future use by other depositors who are 'partnered' with VADS through their data-creation phase.

iv) Advice and Guidance

VADS has undertaken advice and guidance through workshops, outreach-support, and enquiry answering, in particularly to AHRB applicants/grant holders and the visual arts projects under the JISC DNER Image Cluster program. VADS advice and guidance covers all issues of digital resource creation and management, with particular emphasis on subject-specific rights management, metadata creation and on-line-delivery issues.

Workshops

18th Jul 02 AHDS Digitisation Workshop, Oxford, as part of a series of Summer Seminars by the University of Oxford

14th Mar 02 AHDS Digitisation Workshop, Glasgow

14t Feb 02 AHDS Digitisation Workshop, Nottingham

17th Jan 02 AHDS Digitisation Workshop, King's College, University of London

Support to data creation projects:

VADS provided steering committee and direct advice, to 13 data creation projects, due for deposit, including AHRB, JISC and RSLP Grant Holders. Additionally, VADS provided advice to the Imperial War Museum Spanish Civil War Posters initiative.

Guides to Good Practice

Creating and Using Virtual Reality: A Guide to the Arts and Humanities, VADS provided input to this guide, (ADS are co-ordinators for completion of the guide).

Enquiries and assistance:

AHRB applicant enquiries

Innovation Scheme, Aug 2001 - 15
Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts, Sep 2001 - 3
Research Grants, Nov 2001 - 24
Changing Places, Apr 2002 - 1
Resource Enhancement, May 2002 - 21

Initial AHRB applicant enquiries are responded to ASAP and are usually followed up by subsequent email / telephone discussions. In some cases, reviews of drafts and consultation visits occur.

Arts and Humanities Research Board Technical Assessment

Innovation Scheme, Aug 2001 - 18
Resource Enhancement 2001 - 28
Fellowships in Creative and Performing Arts, 4
Research Grants, Nov 2001 - 15
Resource Enhancement, May 2002 - 24

VADS serves on advisory bodies for 5 AHRB funded projects

Other enquiries / assistance.

VADS receives on average approximately 4 enquiries per day.

v) Promotion and Publicity

VADS promotional and publicity activities made significant progress this year, including international outreach. Additional collection leaflet inserts were created for VADS 'information pack'. The pack has been distributed to key conferences and organisations. All new collections at VADS enjoy targeted press releases.

Papers presented / published:

Summer 02 Visual Arts Data Service: Not Just A Pretty Interface, Art Libraries Journal, Volume 27 No 3, 2002
20th -21st Jun 02 Promoting Image Collections for Learning & Teaching: JISC Image Symposium
27th April 02 VADS delivery of Fawcett Suffrage Banners Collection, The Womens Library, Guildhall University
5-7th Apr 02 Poster session Association of Art Historians conference 2002, University of Liverpool
26th Mar 02 VADS: archives, collections and resources, University of Plymouth
21st-24th Mar 02 VADS paper: Visual Arts Data Service: Crossing Frontiers. Joint ARLIS/VRA conference, St Louis, USA.
20th Mar 02 Learning with Pixels: Good Practice Symposium; Surrey Institute of Art & Design University College
13th Mar 02 Archiving Visual Arts Resources: Birkbeck College, London
20th Feb 02 Copyright for Visual Arts Digital Resources: Birkbeck College, London
28th - 29th Nov 01 VADS paper: 15 Million Words Worth of Digital Image Source Materials. CHArt Seventeenth Annual Conference: Digital Art History: A subject in Transition; opportunities and problems
13th Nov 01 Delivery of Image Databases on the Web: Southern Conservation Network, University of Southampton
14th Sep 01 Authoring Learning Resources, Designing Britain project, University of Brighton
21st - 22nd Sep 01 VADS Poster Session at Representing Design 14000 to the Present Day: Design History Society Conference, Royal College of Art and the V&A London

Promotional articles for the Service and specific collections have appeared in AHDS and ADC-LTSN newsletters, ARLIS News-Sheet, the Design History Society Newsletter and the Museums Journal

vi) Strategic Relationships

VADS acts collaboratively to maximise the value of the services it offers and also to build bridges and partnerships to benefit the academic visual arts communities.

Art Design and Communication - Learning and Teaching Subject Network centre:
VADS has established excellent links with its principle LTSN subject-centre. VADS is represented on the centre's Art and Design reference group and the centre has membership of VADS Advisory Group Executive Committee. Operational collaboration is foremost in the area of awareness and profile-raising.

Computing for the History of Art Society:
VADS now sits on the Committee of the Society, furthering direct links with a priority international scholarly community.

VADS continues to pro-actively implement its already established strategic relations with other relevant services within and without the academic sector, particularly those within the auspices of JISC Distributed Image Service, such as the Higher Education Digitisation Service and the Technical Advisory Service for Images. VADS relations with the Visual Resources Association, (international standard body for works of visual culture) and Axis, the Arts Councils funded, National Contemporary Artists Database have also been extended.

vii) Projects (Research and Development)

PICTIVA: 'Promoting the use of On-line Image Collections in Learning and Teaching in the Visual Arts', March 2000 - July 2002, (with The Institute for Image Data Research, University of Northumbria), funded to enhance JISC Activities for Learning and Teaching. The project has through this year, developed the on-line interfaces and back-end systems to assist repurposing VADS image collections for learning, teaching and research. It has also developed infrastructures for producing and publishing Learning Resource and scholarly materials and refined its evaluation procedures.

The findings of the project will inform VADS services overall regarding user needs; and the generic tools produced will increase functionality to VADS delivery systems. Tools for both data management and user-needs are being developed. The former will permit VADS to readily expand contextual content to the digital items it holds, e.g. presenting scholarly analysis of works of visual art. The latter will enable users to trial new search methodologies, (content-based image retrieval), and benefit from the on-line selection, annotation and distribution of items prior to use, via 'personalised' image-sets.

National Fine Art Education Digital Collection Feasibility Study, (Oct-01-Sep02)

VADS was successful in securing JISC funding for this project in August 02, in partnership with Alan Brickwood Associates, Project Director. A Project Manager was recruited from within VADS and a subsequent cover post obtained. The project aims to produce a pilot digital collection of work associated with and held within Higher Education Institutions which represent the value and influence of the artist practitioner in Fine Art Education. Subsequently, VADS will define feasibility and best practices (by scale, circumstance and technical complexities of existing physical collections) for the digitisation and delivery of a fully inclusive distributed National Fine Art Education Digital Collection. The project has enjoyed significant community support following a successful survey of the discipline and establishment of a high profile 'hanging committee'. In the first instance the pilot resource will deliver on-line around 200 digital images and associated metadata made up from work selected from 10 Higher Education Institutions, along with the full digitisation of the Council of National Art Awards Trust Art Collection, which includes work by many extremely important figures in British Art such as Henry Moore, Bridget Riley and Richard Hamilton.

The project will significantly contribute to VADS profile in the Fine Art domain and develop expertise and tools for high quality standards compliant data-creation management, extensible to VADS core work. The project's success in its initial phase has led to extended funding from JISC to July 03.

AHDS Partial Deposit project, (JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources programme, from Sept 02)

VADS contributed to this successful proposal to produce and test a model for 'partial deposit' of institutional resources with services such as the AHDS. The model will take elements of both traditional deposit methodology and harvesting methodology and re-work them to produce an integrated and cohesive deposit model that ensures:
Institutional assets are disclosed to the AHDS at a level of granularity that enables detailed cross-searching with AHDS full deposit collections, and that they are exposed for searching within the appropriate Portals of the JISC information environment.
Long-term preservation of institutional assets is provided for; together with a formal exit strategy should the institution no longer be able or willing to support the collection. VADS will work with two nominated collections from Feb 03, to test the models developed for this project.

AHDS Visual Arts is part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). Copyright 2003.