This year began with the changeover from VADS to AHDS Visual Arts and, under the new name, the centre has continued to develop and extend the breadth of its online resources, whilst upholding its high standards of service to the visual arts research and learning & teaching communities. The thrust of the Centre’s work during the year included:
• Eight new licensed acquisitions, comprising a total of twenty five online collections, bringing the total number of images available up to nearly 25,000.
• Commencement, through the JISC-funded PICTIVA project, of a unique collection of Learning & Teaching resources, re-purposing many of our images in a framework of contextual information.
• Creation of a specific set of objectives, produced by and for AHDS Visual Arts, in response to AHDS strategy. During the course of the year, these objectives were met in full and further aims were added to the Centre’s annual plan which, subsequently, were also achieved.

Furthermore, AHDS has continued its liaison with the Executive, including participation in all working groups, movement towards a central technical infrastructure, help with the design of the new website and contribution of a usability policy for the whole organisation. The Centre has developed its role as AHRB technical consultancy and continues to improve its identity as an important service to the visual arts education community; as well as continuing and developing current relationships, new links have been forged with peer bodies and with other institutions across the country.

A further strand of AHDS Visual Arts’ determination to strengthen its role, has been to focus on its relationship with the visual arts education sector. The Centre has already built advantageous ties with areas of Surrey Institute of Art & Design (e.g. the fine art department and the Craft Study Centre) but both the Centre and SIAD believe that these links can be extended. Participation in SIAD’s CETL bid and discussion with the Research and Development team regarding a recent bid to the JISC have demonstrated considerable overlap in the aims of the two bodies and it is clear that the sharing of expertise, contacts and knowledge could benefit both considerably.

Increasingly, AHDS Visual Arts is moving towards the research environment as an important area for identifying and satisfying target audience requirements. One of the key developments that this will elicit, is the need for greater understanding of researcher needs and desires and, as with other user driven work, AHDS Visual Arts is very keen to examine this issue. It is likely that collaborative efforts between an online provider service like AHDS Visual Arts and the visual arts research community will produce significant benefits for both, as well as revealing data that will be of considerable use to other bodies and institutes. In addition, the invitation to AHDS Centres to attend AHRB Panel meetings on resource enhancement and research grants is a significant development.

i) Collections Development
AHDS Visual Arts has, this year, continued with its previously established policy of aiming for large, high quality image collections, from within HE, with clear significance for the peer sector. It is now starting to see the emergence of AHRB funded projects coming to fruition and, in response to an ever-growing digitization culture, the Centre is developing its collections policy to be more inclusive of smaller, yet equally important, digital resources. For example, previous VADS policy was to define a collection as a united set of digital images ingested from a single source or collated into a single resource. However, this policy hides a more important picture below the surface where, often, important collection titles are lost in the overall package. Two important examples of where this has happened this year are the Craft Study Centre and Fineart collections. In both cases, the ‘parent’ represents a National picture which is, in fact, composed of multiple, diverse collections as shown below. Presenting these as single entities is unrepresentative and restricts identification for users, particularly in a research environment where users need to have a clear idea of what is available to them.

Craft Study Centre:
1. Ceramics Collection (657 images)
2. Printed Textiles Collection (476 images)
3. Woven Textiles Collection (486 images)
4. Calligraphy Collection (554 images)
5. Leach Archive Collection (736 images)
6. Leach Source Collection (44 images)
7. Furniture and wood Collection (76 images)
8. Miscellaneous: metalwork and needlework (5 images)

Fineart:
1. Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, School of Art Archive Collection
2. Council for National Academic Awards Art Collection
3. University of the Arts, Alumni Collection
4. Royal College of Art’s College Collection
5. Norwich School of Art and Design
6. University of Brighton’s Aldrich Collection
7. University of Leeds, University Art Collection
8. University of Ulster, Permanent Collection of Works of Art
9. Glasgow School of Art
10. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee
11. Slade School of Fine Art, Slade School Archive

In 2003-2004, the new acquisitions made available online by AHDS Visual Arts included one AHRB funded project, five supported by the JISC and two developed outside these two frameworks within UK academic institutions.

Subject Name Number
Archaeology
Ancient History
Classics
English Language and Literature
Medieval and Modern History
Modern Languages
Linguistics
Music
Drama and Theatre
Dance
TV, Film and Video
Philosophy
Religious Studies and Theology
Law
Art and Design 25
History of Art 15
Architecture
Media

ii) Collections Management and Preservation

During the course of the year AHDS Visual Arts has prepared all of its new image collections for delivery/preservation by mapping item level metadata into its Visual Resource Association Core 3.0 based metadata-structure, maintaining copies of archival quality images, and also preparing additional preservation copies of the collections. Also, in preparation to move the collections over to the AHDS shared environment, five collections have now been copied from CD-ROM to hard drive which will be available to the Executive in the very near future for ingestion into the newly developed repository.

All twenty five collections have been prepared for delivery on the web, with associated HTML information, and also for preservation. Collection level metadata is currently under preparation for incorporation into the AHDS shared technical infrastructure.

A further twenty one collections have been undergoing preparation for delivery and preservation, all of which are anticipated to come online in the coming year.
In total, resource discovery and preservation metadata for over 10,000 catalogue records are currently under preparation at item level.
iii) Resource Discovery and access
In order to improve its service, AHDS Visual Arts has exploited its ties with visual arts institutes, galleries, funding bodies etc. to conduct an ongoing user-centred survey. The results of the survey are fed into a database and, gradually, a picture is beginning to emerge about the way people use images online, including their likes and dislikes and suggestions on how to improve the status quo. The next stage of the process, when enough data has been compiled, is to analyse the results and create ‘personas’ and ‘user case scenarios’ that, as well as providing useful information about usage of AHDS facilities, will provide invaluable resources for anyone using digital images within a visual arts education/research context.

As a continuation of the JISC-funded PICTIVA project, AHDS Visual Arts has now begun to roll out a series of new Learning and Teaching resources that repurpose, and add value to, the image collections that were created for the project.

The following table includes statistics for hits, page views, visitor sessions, and visitors for the AHDS Visual Arts site over the year. It is also important to note that, over and above these figures, the Fineart project website attracted 137,601 vistor sessions.

Statistics - Report Range: 1st August 2003 – 31st July 2004
Hits Entire Site (Successful) 3,935,059
Average Per Day 10,751
Home Page 135,274
Page Views Page Views (Impressions) 828,758
Average Per Day 2,264
Document Views 601,395
Visitor Sessions Visitor Sessions 243,788
Average Per Day 666
Average Visitor Session Length 00:17:36
International Visitor Sessions 68.9%
Visitor Sessions of Unknown Origin 18.74%
Visitor Sessions from UK 12.35%
Visitors Unique Visitors 91,992
Visitors Who Visited Once 77,887
Visitors Who Visited More Than Once 14,105
Visitor sessions are indicated in the table below for the twenty most active UK HE Institutions.
Most Active UK HE Institutions
Name RAE Hits % Sessions
1 http://linst.ac.uk 5 53,656 7.9% 884
2 http://surrart.ac.uk 3a 108,464 15.98% 577
3 http://dundee.ac.uk - 13,066 1.92% 411
4 http://kcl.ac.uk 5 25,129 3.7% 394
5 http://bton.ac.uk 5 15,426 2.27% 385
6 http://open.ac.uk 5 3,656 0.53% 375
7 http://bris.ac.uk 3a 17,199 2.53% 357
8 http://ox.ac.uk 4 18,083 2.66% 342
9 http://ed.ac.uk - 6,677 0.98% 295
10 http://mmu.ac.uk 4 21,165 3.11% 270
11 http://wlv.ac.uk 3a 2,747 0.4% 254
12 http://uce.ac.uk 4 2,508 0.36% 253
13 http://leeds.ac.uk 3a 15,897 2.34% 252
14 http://lut.ac.uk 4 9,914 1.46% 239
15 http://ahds.ac.uk - 55,789 8.22% 216
16 http://cam.ac.uk 5 6,361 0.93% 200
17 http://soton.ac.uk 4 8,736 1.28% 198
18 http://nottingham.ac.uk 3b 4,340 0.63% 178
19 http://ucl.ac.uk 5 7,890 1.16% 168
20 http://uwe.ac.uk 4 10,473 1.54% 166
Subtotal For institutions above 407,176 60.01% 6,414
Total For the Log File 678,492 100% 13,937

N.B. This year has seen a huge leap in numbers of registered users on the AHDS Visual Arts site. The total at the end of July 2003 was 2586 but, by the end of this year the figure had risen by 180% to 7221, an extremely significant increase.
User statistics, particularly those gained through the AHDS Visual Arts login procedure, demonstrate that 44.36% of our users are directly attributable to UK HE Institutions.
iv) Resource Delivery
Most of the resource delivery developments for AHDS Visual Arts are being co-ordinated by the Executive in line with the shared infrastructure due in place at the end of 2005. However, as part of the PICTIVA project, and associated ties with the JISC, AHDS Visual Arts has conducted quite a lot of work in the growing arena of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and Virtual Research Environments (VREs), particularly in relation to image based education/research. It is hoped that in the coming year we will be able to make our learning resources available, as discreet objects, for embedding within VLEs and VREs.
Most Downloaded Files – AHDS Visual Arts
File No. of Downloads % of Total Downloads Session Downloads
1 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/CaseStudy.pdf 3,232 20.15% 887
2 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/digitisation.pdf 999 6.23% 681
3 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/depositing/deposit_licence.pdf 784 4.88% 658
4 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/depositing/depositor_guidelines.pdf 796 4.96% 620
5 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/depositing/data_transfer_form.pdf 619 3.86% 517
6 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/depositing/collections_policy.pdf 649 4.04% 497
7 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/tree.pdf 638 3.97% 482
8 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/form.pdf 690 4.3% 427
9 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/advice/case_studies/CaseStudy.pdf 2,040 12.72% 426
10 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/costing.pdf 544 3.39% 412
11 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/licence.pdf 527 3.28% 406
12 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/advice/case_studies/suffrage.pdf 809 5.04% 393
13 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/advice/case_studies/imperial.pdf 429 2.67% 318
14 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/advice/case_studies/exeter.pdf 383 2.38% 298
15 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/advice/standards/crosswalk.pdf 342 2.13% 280
16 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/rca.pdf 839 5.23% 258
17 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/WORK.pdf 294 1.83% 232
18 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/about/collaboration/tasi_tor.pdf 244 1.52% 207
19 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/ARTIST.pdf 236 1.47% 202
20 http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/fineart/image.pdf 204 1.27% 173
Total For the Files Above 15,298 95.4% N/A

Most Downloaded Files – Fineart.ac.uk
Walker Hopkins Cornock AGD TOTAL
Aug 03 14 13 27
Sep 03 18 17 36
Oct 03 31 21 52
Nov 03 22 17 39
Dec 03 27 21 48
Jan 04 33 22 12 67
Feb 04 35 23 11 69
March 04 42 25 15 82
April 04 46 32 27 105
May 04 95 59 92 57 303
June 04 120 78 100 67 365
July 04 117 83 119 77 396
Aug 04 128 92 106 76 402
Annual Totals 460 580 557 342 1939

v) Advice and Guidance
AHDS Visual Arts has been proactive this year in offering advice to the visual arts education sector focusing, primarily, on: AHRB applicant advice (the Centre contacted all the AHRB applicants on its lists and a total of 57 applicants have contacted the centre); the institutes represented by members of the AHDS Visual Arts advisory committee; Surrey Institute of Art & Design; and website user enquiries.

AHDS Visual Arts has undertaken advice and guidance through workshops, playing a significant role in the AHDS Workshop series and also through development of combined workshops with other bodies. This year AHDS Visual Arts contributed to the TASI workshop: Digital Images: Building up a Departmental Resource for Intranet Delivery and developed a one day seminar, offered initially at Roehampton University, called: Digital Assets Management.
AHDS Visual Arts has provided technical guidance for AHRB on the technical appendices of resource enhancement and research grant applications throughout the year. The Centre has been instrumental in steering six AHRB-funded projects: National Inventory of European Paintings; Latin American Archive; CVMA; Ruskin Project at Oxford; Constance Howard Resource Centre in Textiles; Textiles Conservation Centre, Southampton.
vi) Promotion and Publicity
Although most publicity material is now created centrally, AHDS Visual Arts has been proactive in its dissemination and has created further material of its own, in particular, subject specific or limited-time material.
Three banners demonstrating the full range of AHDS Visual Arts’ image collections have been created under the new AHDS look-and-feel as well as a series of large posters (printed by Surrey Institute of Art & Design) and promotional stickers and pencils.

Publicity shots/mailouts:

JISCmail lists 11
Leaflets to institutions 2500
Leaflets at conferences 1500
Other (ADC-LTSN) 2250
Press releases 11

Events and activities attended:

CHArt: Convergent Practices Nov-04 Birkbeck, University of London Demonstrator Demonstrate Fineart.ac.uk
ARLIS: Slide Study Day Mar-04 Royal College of Art Presentation Paper: Metadata in the real world
COMET-2 Mar-04 Edgehill College, Ormskirk, Lancashire Speaker Paper: From digit to digitisation
AAH Mar-04 University of Nottingham Demonstrator Demonstrate Fineart.ac.uk
CLTAD Apr-04 Barcelona Speaker Paper: Ensuring educative value in Virtual Learning Environments; avoiding loss in technological translation
Shock of the Old Apr-04 University of Oxford Attendee
E-Learning: Beyond the Learner Apr-04 University of Oxford Attendee Attendance
ARLIS: Through the Looking glass Jul-04 ARLIS/University of Oxford Attendee/Stand Attendance and an exhibition stand
Sustainability Workshop Sep-03 JISC, London Participant
Images Seminar Mar-04 TASI/Bristol Speaker
What AHDS Visual Arts can do for you…. Digitisation put in the context of museums Jul-04 Imperial War Museum Speaker
National Fine Art Symposium Mar-04 Women’s Library, London Attendee
Symposium on Learning & Teaching Mar-04 Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College Speaker/Demonstrator Exploring new tools to enhance AHDS Visual Arts' images for learning and teaching
E-Resources Day Jul-04 Library, UWE, Bristol Stand To demonstrate AHDS Visual Arts
Launch Event Oct-03 AHDS, British Academy Represent AHDS Visual Arts
Advice/awareness raising visit May-04 University of Wales, Aberystwyth Advice on a project
Advice/awareness raising visit University of Northumbria
Advice/awareness raising visit University of Hertfordshire
Advice/awareness raising visit Artifact/MMU
Advice/awareness raising visit Birkbeck College
Advice/awareness raising visit University of Brighton
Advice/awareness raising visit Open University
Advice/awareness raising visit University of the Arts, London
Advice/awareness raising visit TASI/University of Bristol
Advice/awareness raising visit British Council
Advice/awareness raising visit Cranfield Institute of Technology
Advice/awareness raising visit Roehampton University
Advice/awareness raising visit Chelsea College of Art & Design
Advice/awareness raising visit JISC

vii) Strategic Relationships
AHDS has put considerable effort into developing relationships with significant members of the visual arts education/research sectors and, through the outreach mentioned above, has cemented a number of relationships which, it is hoped, will translate into more tangible forms in the coming months. One example which indicates that this policy may be working is in research into Content Based Image Retrieval: an extremely important topic for people concerned with the full exploitation of digital imagery. AHDS Visual Arts is embarking on a joint research project with the University of Northumbria, Newcastle to explore ways in which this technology can be developed.

AHDS Visual Arts 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. To this end the Centre has continued its good relationships with peer bodies, for example: Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI), EDINA and Artifact. This year has seen an agreement to adopt a Memorandum of Understanding between AHDS Visual Arts and Artifact and also seen discussions towards one between AHDS Visual Arts and EDINA. Also, the Centre, again through its outreach, has begun to develop its profile within the sector, in particular, laying foundations for possibly advantageous relationships with the JISC and AHRB.
AHDS Visual Arts has also continued to develop its relationship with Surrey Institute of Art & Design, offering advice at various levels and assisting in a bid to JISC for the development of online tools and also in the institute’s ongoing bid to become a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
viii) Projects (Research and Development)
AHDS Visual Arts has instigated the National Digital Image Initiative (NDII) to establish a national overview of issues, and potential solutions, relating to visual arts image collections within higher education institutes and associated organizations. Statement on the raison d'être of the NDII: “The National Digital Image Initiative has been established to explore issues relating to the effects of the digital revolution on our use of images. It will identify problems and develop practical solutions; liaise with stakeholders and interested parties; and offer guidance to teaching, learning and research communities.” A key aspect of the NDII is the creation of a consortium of stakeholders, and other interested parties, brought together to act as a conduit for their larger community and its problematic digital image issues. The NDII is being coordinated by AHDS Visual Arts (part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service) and is supported by a large number of visual arts institutes and related bodies.

AHDS Visual Arts continues to host:

• PICTIVA: 'Promoting the use of On-line Image Collections in Learning and Teaching In the Visual Arts', March 2000 - July 2003, (with The Institute for Image Data Research, University of Northumbria), funded to enhance JISC Activities for Learning and Teaching.
The project offers on-line interfaces and back-end systems to assist access to and the repurposing of image collections for learning, teaching and research. It has also developed infrastructures for producing and publishing Learning Resources and scholarly materials and collating image use information.
• Fineart.ac.uk: a JISC funded project in partnership with Alan Brickwood Associates. The project has produced 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. 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 delivers around 200 digital images and associated metadata on-line, from work selected from 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.
AHDS Visual Arts has contributed to the AHDS Hybrid Archives Project, (JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources programme)
The Centre continued its role within the JISC Usability Study led by the Centre for HCI Design, City University, which undertook an extensive usability and accessibility analysis of the new AHDS Visual Arts interfaces developed through PICTIVA.

Appendix 1: New acquisitions

This year AHDS Visual Arts has accessioned eight new licensed acquisitions, comprising twenty five collections, all of which are now available online through the AHDS Visual Arts catalogue. The collections are:

1. Digitization in Art and Design (London College of Printing)
2. The Tim Mara Collection
3. Fine Art Programme 2003 (Surrey Institute of Art & Design)
4. The City of the Future (Patrick Keiller)
5. Ceramic Decoration (Craft Study Centre)
6. The Woolmark Company (London College of Fashion)

Craft Study Centre:

7. Ceramics Collection
8. Printed Textiles Collection
9. Woven Textiles Collection
10. Calligraphy Collection
11. Leach Archive Collection
12. Leach Source Collection
13. Furniture and wood Collection
14. Miscellaneous: metalwork and needlework

National Fine Art Education Collection:

15. Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, School of Art Archive Collection
16. Council for National Academic Awards Art Collection
17. University of the Arts, Alumni Collection
18. Royal College of Art’s College Collection
19. Norwich School of Art and Design
20. University of Brighton’s Aldrich Collection
21. University of Leeds, University Art Collection
22. University of Ulster, Permanent Collection of Works of Art
23. Glasgow School of Art
24. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee
25. Slade School of Fine Art, Slade School Archive

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