Table of contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Summary
1.2 Outline of the Report
1.3 Timeliness and Relevance
1.4 Current Problems
1.5 Proposed Solutions
1.6 Benefits
1.7 Financial considerations
1.8 Conduct of the Feasibility Study
1.8.1 Workshop
1.8.2 Consultation
1.8.3 Fact Finding
1.8.4 Project Group and Acknowledgments
2 Perceived needs and the current situation
2.1 Background
2.1.1 Data sets and services today
2.1.2 Commercial data sets
2.1.3 Resources for teaching
2.1.4 Networked Information in the UK
2.1.5 The international dimension
2.2 Needs
2.3 Resource Creation
2.3.1 Academic quality.
2.3.1.1 Need
2.3.1.2 Current Situation
2.3.2 Copyright
2.3.2.1 Need
2.3.2.2 Current Situation
2.3.3 Design standards
2.3.3.1 Need
2.3.3.2 Current Situation
2.3.4 Re-usability and access
2.3.4.1 Need
2.3.4.2 Current Situation
2.3.5 Resource identification
2.3.5.1 Need
2.3.5.2 Current Situation
2.3.6 Resource description
2.3.6.1 Need
2.3.6.2 Current Situation
2.3.7 Technical description
2.3.7.1 Need
2.3.7.2 Current Situation
2.3.8 User Guidelines
2.3.8.1 Need
2.3.8.2 Current Situation
2.4 Resource Management
2.4.1 Basic procedures
2.4.1.1 Need
2.4.1.2 Current Situation
2.4.2 Information content
2.4.2.1 Need
2.4.2.2 Current Situation
2.4.3 Intellectual history
2.4.3.1 Need
2.4.3.2 Current Situation
2.4.4 Physical access
2.4.4.1 Need
2.4.4.2 Current Situation
2.4.5 Conditions of use
2.4.5.1 Need
2.4.5.2 Current Situation
2.4.6 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
2.4.6.1 Need
2.4.6.2 Current Situation
2.4.7 Charging
2.4.7.1 Need
2.4.7.2 Current Situation
2.4.8 Platform-specific data
2.4.8.1 Need
2.4.8.2 Current Situation
2.5 Resource Preservation
2.5.1 Preservation procedures
2.5.1.1 Need
2.5.1.2 Current Situation
2.5.2 Preservation media
2.5.2.1 Need
2.5.2.2 Current Situation
2.6 Resource Dissemination and Discovery
2.6.1 Delivery platforms
2.6.1.1 Need
2.6.1.2 Current Situation
2.6.2 Communications infrastructure
2.6.2.1 Need
2.6.2.2 Current Situation
2.6.3 Catalogues and Indexes
2.6.3.1 Need
2.6.3.2 Current Situation
2.6.4 Gateways
2.6.4.1 Need
2.6.4.2 Current Situation
2.6.5 Service reliability
2.6.5.1 Need
2.6.5.2 Current Situation
2.6.6 Documentation, training and support for users
2.6.6.1 Need
2.6.6.2 Current Situation
2.6.7 Resource discovery tools
2.6.7.1 Need
2.6.7.2 Current Situation
2.6.8 Documentation and training in resource discovery
2.6.8.1 Need
2.6.8.2 Current Situation
3 Scope and Structure of the ahds
3.1 Disciplines and data types
3.2 The ahds Community
3.3 Organization of the ahds
3.4 ahds Constitution and Procedures
3.4.1 ahds Management Committee
3.4.2 ahds Executive
3.4.3 Service Providers
3.4.4 ahds Service Providers Forum
3.4.5 Additional Resources
3.5 Strategic Functions of the Infrastructure
3.6 Operational Functions of the Infrastructure
3.7 Centrally provided services
3.7.1 ahds Catalogue
3.7.2 ahds Gateway
3.7.3 ahds Data Vault
3.8 Distributed Data Services
3.8.1 Accession of data sets
3.8.2 Maintenance and development of data sets
3.8.3 Data access facilities
3.8.4 Support facilities
3.9 Service Provision Contracts
4 Standardization
4.1 Standards Reference Guide
4.2 Data Formats
4.2.1 Textual data
4.2.2 Tabular data
4.2.3 Graphical data
4.2.4 Audio and other time-based data
4.3 Data Documentation
4.4 Data Provision
4.4.1 Charging and licensing
4.4.2 Intellectual Property Rights
4.4.3 User Support and Consultancy
4.4.4 Maintenance, Error Correction, Quality Assessment
4.5 Data Preservation
5 Implementation Strategy
5.1 Pilot Data Service Providers
6 Financial and Costing Considerations
6.1 AHDS Executive
6.2 Consultancies
6.3 Service Providers
6.4 Other Issues
7 Appendixes
7.1 Feasibility Study Proposal and Initial Workshop
7.1.1 Proposal
7.1.2 British Academy Workshop
7.2 Consultation Exercise
7.2.1 Announcement of Feasibility Study
7.2.1.1 Paper Distribution
7.2.1.2 Electronic Distribution
7.2.2 Responses
7.3 Fact Finding
7.3.1 Visits
7.3.2 Questionnaires
7.3.3 Documentation
7.3.4 Additional Material
7.3.5 Consultation Document
7.3.6 Conferences
8 Institutions and Projects
8.1 UK Services
8.1.1 British Atmospheric Data Centre (badc)
8.1.1.1 Overview
8.1.1.2 Key services:
8.1.1.3 Extent
8.1.1.4 Source of funding
8.1.2 Computers in Teaching Initiative (cti) Centres
8.1.2.1 Overview
8.1.2.2 Key services:
8.1.2.3 Extent
8.1.2.4 Source of funding
8.1.3 ESRC Data Archive (eda)
8.1.3.1 Overview
8.1.3.2 Key services
8.1.3.3 Extent
8.1.3.4 Source of funding:
8.1.4 Global Environmental Change Data Network Facility (genie)
8.1.4.1 Overview
8.1.4.2 Key services:
8.1.4.3 Extent
8.1.4.4 Source of funding
8.1.5 Manchester Information Datasets and Associated Services (midas)
8.1.5.1 Overview
8.1.5.2 Key services:
8.1.5.3 Extent
8.1.5.4 Source of funding
8.1.6 NetEc
8.1.6.1 Overview
8.1.6.2 Key services:
8.1.6.3 Extent
8.1.6.4 Source of funding
8.1.7 Office for Humanities Communication (ohc)
8.1.7.1 Overview
8.1.7.2 Key services:
8.1.7.3 Extent
8.1.7.4 Source of funding
8.1.8 Oxford Text Archive (ota)
8.1.8.1 Overview
8.1.8.2 Key services:
8.1.8.3 Extent
8.1.8.4 Source of funding
8.1.9 UK Office for Library and Information Networking (ukoln)
8.1.9.1 Overview
8.1.9.2 Key services:
8.1.9.3 Extent
8.1.9.4 Source of Funding
8.2 Comparable services based outside the UK
8.2.1 Biblioth\|è\|que Nationale de France (bnf)
8.2.1.1 Overview
8.2.1.2 Key services
8.2.1.3 Extent
8.2.1.4 Source of funding
8.2.2 Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (ceth)
8.2.2.1 Overview
8.2.2.2 Key services:
8.2.2.3 Extent
8.2.2.4 Source of funding
8.2.3 Canadian Heritage Information Network (chin)
8.2.3.1 Overview
8.2.3.2 Key services:
8.2.3.3 Extent
8.2.3.4 Source of funding
8.2.4 Dansk Data Arkiv (dda)
8.2.4.1 Overview
8.2.4.2 Key services:
8.2.4.3 Extent
8.2.4.4 Source of funding
8.2.5 DANTE InfoFLOW
8.2.5.1 Overview
8.2.5.2 Key services
8.2.5.3 Extent
8.2.5.4 Source of funding
8.2.6 Netherlands Historical Data Archive (nhda)
8.2.6.1 Overview
8.2.6.2 Key services:
8.2.6.3 Source of funding
8.2.7 Getty Art History Information Program (ahip)
8.2.7.1 Overview
8.2.7.2 Key services
8.2.7.3 Extent
8.2.7.4 Source of funding
8.2.8 Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities (ncch)
8.2.8.1 Overview
8.2.8.2 Key services:
8.2.8.3 Extent
8.2.8.4 Source of funding
8.2.9 Norwegian Social Sciences Data Archive (nsd)
8.2.9.1 Overview
8.2.9.2 Key services:
8.2.9.3 Extent
8.2.9.4 Source of funding
8.2.10 Research Libraries Group (rlg)
8.2.10.1 Overview
8.2.10.2 Key services:
8.2.10.3 Extent
8.2.10.4 Source of funding
8.2.11 University of Virginia Electronic Text Center (uva)
8.2.11.1 Overview
8.2.11.2 Key services:
8.2.11.3 Extent
8.2.11.4 Source of funding
8.3 Example projects
8.3.1 Network and metadata projects
8.3.1.1 Georgetown Catalogue of Projects in Electronic Text (cpet)
8.3.1.2 Norwegian Documentation Project
8.3.1.3 Writers And Their Copyright Holders (watch)
8.3.1.4 InfoServices
8.3.1.5 The Nordic WAIS/World Wide Web Project
8.3.1.6 The Allison Research Index of Art and Design (ariad)/head>
8.3.2 Art and Art History projects
8.3.2.1 Remote Access to Museums and Archives (rama)
8.3.2.2 Beazley Archive
8.3.2.3 Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture
8.3.2.4 Database of Ancient Greek Sculpture
8.3.2.5 Witt Computer Index
8.3.3 Text and image projects
8.3.3.1 Archivo Digital de Manuscritos y Textos Espa\|ñ\|oles (admyte)
8.3.3.2 Canterbury Tales Project
8.3.3.3 Electronic Peirce Consortium
8.3.3.4 Wittgenstein Archive
8.3.3.5 Hartlib Papers
8.3.4 Language corpus projects
8.3.4.1 International Computer Archive of Modern English (icame)
8.3.4.2 British National Corpus (bnc)
8.3.4.3 Corpus of Contemporary Spanish
8.3.5 Historical, musical and specialist interest projects
8.3.5.1 Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire
8.3.5.2 Thesaurum Musicarum Latinarum (tml)
8.3.5.3 Syriac Computing Institute
9 Select Bibliography