1 Introduction

The recommendations of the Feasibility Study may be summarized as follows:

• the role of an Arts and Humanities Data Service should be to promote effective, low-cost access to the widest range of relevant digital resources by UK researchers and teachers from all Arts and Humanities disciplines;
• the functions to be performed include: cataloguing and identification of resources; development and application of standards; documentation and training; archival preservation of existing resources; identification and creation of new resources; protection of intellectual property rights;
• the Arts and Humanities Data Service should have a distributed structure, with some functions being performed by a central infrastructure, and others by co-operating specialist data service providers;
• the Service should define standard policies with respect to the description and encoding of data resources, their preservation, their dissemination, and a range of ancillary support facilities and services;
• the Service should invite bids from suitably qualified institutions wishing to provide specific resources within the AHDS infrastructure and define ways in which such service providers may co-operate;
• initial funding is required for an executive to oversee the process of establishing an organizational framework for the Service, and for a small group of four or five collaborating service providers. These should be chosen by open tender, with a view to covering the areas of textual data, numeric and historical data sets, records of images and artefacts, time-based resources such as music and video; the total budget for the Service envisaged here is likely to fall between 500,000 and one million pounds per annum during the start-up period.

The opportunities arise in particular from the rapid increase in the number, variety and accessibility of electronic data sets now being created for research and teaching. Electronic data sets are being produced across the whole range of humanities disciplines, covering both primary and secondary materials in a wide variety of formats --- text, data, image, sound, and multimedia. At the same time, as a result of institutional information technology strategies, the number of teachers and researchers who are equipped to take advantage of these resources is steadily increasing, as is the recognition of their value in exploratory, resource-based, learning.

• dependence on specific hardware or software: this makes it hard both to archive data sets effectively and to ensure their long term re-usability, without significant additional costs;
• inadequate or non-existent documentation: electronic resources are largely unusable without some form of documentation, which is all too often not readily available, either as a result of lack of awareness of the need for it, or because in many areas there are no agreed documentation standards;
• inadequate resource discovery tools: in the absence of both widely accepted standards for cataloguing such resources and any simple mechanism for searching such catalogues as exist, it is difficult or impossible for individual researchers or teachers to locate existing data sets, or to carry out reliably complete searches through available resources, even with skilled bibliographic assistance;
• a variety of incompatible complex access tools: because of the wide variety of software mechanisms now used for accessing and manipulating data sets, potential users must acquire a daunting range of information and skills, largely irrelevant to their immediate concerns;
• insufficient attention to data preservation: in many cases there are no procedures or plans to ensure the long term preservation of the data sets, so that the investment in creating the data set will be wasted;
• institutional inflexibility: the rapidity with which information technology changes has made it very difficult for existing institutional structures to adapt to new opportunities. Despite widespread recognition of the gradual convergence of library and computing services functions, it remains difficult to integrate the complementary skills of library and computing staff in most institutions. Such integrated expertise is, however, essential for the support of the growing numbers of IT- aware teachers and researchers.

Such a Service will need to concern itself with a wide range of activities. We list here a few of the most immediately obvious requirements:

• identification of user needs;
• creation and acquisition of data sets;
• development and promotion of standard data formats;
• documentation of data sets;
• development of a comprehensive catalogue of resources;
• development and promotion of suitable tools for resource discovery and manipulation, both for UK and overseas data sets;
• archiving of resources;
• protection of the rights of data providers;
• provision of user training and support;
• promotion of the use of data sets in both research and teaching.

Some of these activities might be most effectively provided in a distributed environment, notably those requiring extensive specialist knowledge; others, notably the establishment of standards and the provision of comprehensive resource discovery tools, seem better suited to a centralized infrastructure.

The present proposal therefore proposes a framework in which a network of autonomous service providers can co-ordinate activities under the direction of a service infrastructure.

This distributed approach provides the flexibility needed to adjust to a rapidly changing landscape of information provision. The Humanities comprise many widely-divergent disciplines, each with its own highly specialized requirements, but each also highly inter- dependent. The approach proposed here encourages the emergence of a consensus on such issues as standardization of resource description and provision, without imposing a rigid structure. It promotes the development and application of relevant specialist expertise and facilitates the evolution of a service which accurately reflects the real needs of a large community with widely-ranging and diffuse needs. At the same time, the existence of an effective infrastructure allows for significant cost-sharing and the pooling of resources wherever appropriate.

The proposed Arts and Humanities Data Service will comprise:

• a Management Committee, acting as liaison between the AHDS and its funders, which has final responsibility for the Service;
• an Executive, with responsibilities for co- ordination of AHDS-funded services, policy-making and day to day running of the Service as a whole;
• a number of Service Providers providing specialist services of various kinds, according to AHDS-defined standards.

• transferability and re-usability of expensive data resources;
• a framework for the creation of complementary and linkable data sets;
• co-ordinated and coherent procedures for the investigation and adoption of relevant standards in data preparation, documentation, preservation and dissemination, and for involvement in European or international initiatives to create new standards;
• a framework and procedures to ensure the long-term availability of electronic data sets;
• faster and better-informed access to remote data sets by individual researchers, teachers and students;
• wider awareness and understanding of new access mechanisms and manipulation tools, thereby ensuring more efficient use of national and international resources.

The establishment of the AHDS should therefore make a significant contribution to improved efficiency in the conduct of research and the quality of research results. It should also greatly improve the efficiency and quality of teaching and learning facilities within the Higher Education community.

The proposal is timely, in that it comes at a moment when there is widespread recognition of the scope of the problems which it seeks to address. Its proposals are well-grounded in that they result from a broad-based consultation with a range of expert groups, as well as the specialist knowledge and experience of the Study's authors and Steering Group.

For the infrastructure itself, we estimate an annual cost of the order of 150K, to cover at least three full time appointments, and funding for meetings, workshops, publications, etc. Again, it is assumed that the central AHDS office will be located at some existing institution which will underwrite establishment and similar costs.

• Chair: Dr Richard Heseltine, Librarian of the University of Hull, and member of the ISSC;
• Shirleen Craig, ISSC Co-ordinator;
• Dr Marilyn Deegan, Director, Office for Humanities Communication;
• Professor Denise Lievesley, Director, ESRC Data Archive, University of Essex;
• Dr Seamus Ross, Assistant Secretary (IT), British Academy.