Background to the ADS

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) was founded in 1996 for the purpose of preserving digital data produced by archaeologists based in the UK, and making it available for scholarly re-use. The ADS was initially established as part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), with sister services covering other disciplines within the arts and humanities. Data is archived to ensure long-term preservation, but it is also made available free of charge for download or via online interfaces to encourage re-use.

The digital archive at the Archaeology Data Service was established several years prior to the acceptance of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model as an ISO standard in 2002 (Lavoie, 2004). ADS archival procedures and policies have evolved over time as the organization itself and the wider world of digital archiving have grown and matured. We have now adopted the OAIS reference model approach and mapped our archival practices to it.

ADS preservation strategy is based on the migration of submitted files into archival formats suitable for preservation. This strategy is detailed in our formal preservation policy, which, along with all ADS advice and guidance, is available online. File formats for preservation are selected using a number of criteria as described in the DPC Technology Watch Report File Formats for Preservation(Todd, 2009).

It is important for the ADS to be able to demonstrate that it can be trusted as a digital archive. Researchers who have invested time and effort in creating a dataset needs to trust that we will take care of their data in the long term. They also need to trust that they will be able to locate their files whenever they need to access them in the future. In order to further enhance the level of trust that our depositors put in us as an appropriate repository for their data, we successfully applied for the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) at the start of 2011. Undergoing the DSA peer review process has benefited the ADS in many ways (Mitcham and Hardman, 2011), but the opportunity it gave us to reflect on and further formalize ADS archival procedures was a valuable outcome in its own right.

ADS collections policy

The ADS has a collections policy which describes the types of data that we accept for deposit.