The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) is funded by the JISC and the AHRC 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 AHRC or the British Academy 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 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 AHRC are required to offer digital resources for deposit with the AHDS. There is no charge. AHRC funded projects can request funds to cover the cost of preparing data as part of their application to the AHRC.

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