Research and Development

The ADS's mission is to support research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. Fundamental to us fulfilling this mission is an ongoing programme of research into all areas of digital preservation, resource discovery and data sharing. Consequently we are actively engaged with research projects working with partners in all sectors of UK archaeology; academic, government, commercial and local. In addition to UK focussed research activities the ADS has a long track record of successful leadership and participation in European Union funded projects and more recently in collaboration with partners in the United States of America.

Current ADS Research Activities

Impact of the ADS: a study and methods for enhancing sustainability
Funded by JISC this project, undertaken in association with Charles Beagrie , will analyse and survey perceptions of the value of digital collections held by the Archaeology Data Service and how those perceptions of value can be measured. As part of this work, we will assess and quantify the economic impact of those collections with the ultimate objective of improving their prospects for sustainability. We will explore a range of methods and sources of data including investigating data from 1996-2011 on the growth of collections and users at ADS and how return on investment grows with the collections. A focus of the project is disseminating our findings and recommendations to the wider JISC and research data communities.

SWORDARM
Funded by JISC, in the SWORD-ARM project we will work with a number of HE institutions (the universities of Southampton, Glasgow and Manchester) to refine and enhance ADS’s ingest and charging process by creating a SWORD client to streamline and automate deposit. This will strengthen the ADS data management systems and business infrastructure, and deliver real benefits to depositors in terms of their ability to deposit data, create and validate metadata, engage in selection and retention, manage multiple deposits and, crucially, to manage cost estimate and charging processes. SWORD-ARM therefore represents an enhancement to ADS’s role as a discipline-based repository, and an embedding of our role in a number of HE institutions. SWORD-ARM will significantly improve the ability of ADS to handle increasing volumes of data and to charge directly for deposit. It will improve the service offered to our depositors in terms of cost transparency, ease of use and speed of deposit.

CARARE: a Europeana partner project
CARARE is a best practice network funded by the European Commission's ICT Policy Support Programme . CARARE brings together heritage agencies and organisations, archaeological museums and research institutions and specialist digital archives from all over Europe to establish a service that will make digital content for Europe's unique archaeological monuments and historic sites interoperable with Europeana . It aims to add the 3D and Virtual Reality content to Europeana. The ADS have specific responsibility for investigating the issues surrounding the long-term sustainability of the CARARE aggregation service.

ACE: Archaeology in Contemporary Europe
The ACE network aims to promote contemporary archaeology at a European wide level, by emphasising its cultural, scientific, and economic dimensions, including its manifold interest for the wider public. This EU Culture Programme project, intends to develop standards and services with Europe wide application. The project starts in 2008 and is due to be completed in 2012.

ALSF: Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund
The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) was introduced to provide funds to tackle a wide range of problems in areas affected by aggregates extraction. The ADS is currently undertaking an English Heritage backed project to disseminate ALSF information on the web.

EFCHED: Environmental Factors in the Chronology of Human Evolution and Dispersal
The major objective of the EFCHED programme has been to integrate and strengthen UK research in human evolution. The ADS is responsible for the data archiving and dissemination from eleven projects funded under the EFCHED programme.

---

Completed Projects

ADS+: Fedora implementation at the ADS
An AHRC funded project under the Digital Equipment and Database ( DEDEFI ) programme, which aims to increase the sustainability of the ADS, by implementing Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture). This will increase cost-effectiveness and improve the level of access to end users of all ADS archival holdings. The project is expected to run from the March 2010 until March 2011.

STELLAR Project & STAR Project
STELLAR is a collaboration between the ADS and co-investigators at the University of Glamorgan and English Heritage, to enhance the discoverability, accessibility, impact and sustainability of ADS datasets and STAR project outcomes (services and data resources) by enhancing the interoperability between resources using the latest integration technologies and development of semantic search facilities and associated user interfaces. STELLAR will build on outcomes and tools from the previous AHRC funded STAR project, which in its turn extended semantic search techniques initially developed through the EPSRC funded FACET project, a collaboration with the Science Museum.

TAG: Transatlantic Archaeology Gateway
The primary aim of the TAG project is to develop tools for transatlantic cross-searching and semantic interoperability between ADS and Digital Antiquity in the United States. This project, jointly funded by JISC and the NEH, aims to investigate cross-searching and semantic linking between archives held at the ADS, Arizona State University and Digital Antiquity. Due for completion in 2011.

DARIAH: Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities
The mission of DARIAH is to enhance and support digitally-enabled research across the humanities and arts. It aims to develop and maintain an infrastructure in support of ICT-based research practices, through the creation of a technical demonstrator based on the ARENA project, called ARENA 2 , but with an enhanced web services architecture. The project began in October 2008 and is due to be completed in October 2010.

GLADE: Grey Literature - Access Dissemination and Enhancement
Between 2009 and early 2010, the GLADE project sought to explore the potential options and possibilities for accessing the backlog of archaeological grey literature reports produced since the introduction of PPG16 a vast resource of reports from small to medium scale developer-led archaeological investigations produced annually in the UK. The project report includes results of research, interviews and surveys about the holdings of grey literature in the UK, and common methods of discovery and reasons for reuse of the reports.
Download the GLADE report

RECAP RescuE of Completed Archaeological Projects
Funded by English Heritage and running between 2003 and 2009, the RECAP project archived a number of completed projects from the last decade, some of international importance, which have created significant amounts of digital information.

Archaeotools: Natural Language Processing and Faceted Classification
Between September 2007 and September 2009 the ADS and the Natural Language Processing Research Group at the University of Sheffield worked on the Archaeotools project funded under the e-Science Research Grants Scheme which itself was a collaboration between three major funding bodies, the AHRC, the EPSRC and the JISC.

VENUS: Virtual ExploratioN of Underwater Sites :
The VENUS project aims to develop scientific methodologies and deliver technological tools for the virtual exploration of deep underwater archaeology sites. Funded by the European Commission, completed in 2009.

CIE Demonstrator, funded by the Common Information Environment : Accessible until January 2007, now no longer available.

Big Data: Preservation and Management Strategies for Exceptionally Large Data Formats : Funded by English Heritage, for completion in 2006.

OASIS: Online AccesS to the Index of archaeological investigationS :
Phase 1 funded by RSLP complete, current phase funded by English Heritage and Historic Scotland, for completion in 2006.

Making the LEAP : Linking electronic archives and publications. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the ICT Strategy Programme.

HEIRPORT : The Historic Environment Portal lets users search many databases at once including ArchSearch, CANMORE, COFLEIN, EH, Excavation Index, OGAR, Portable Antiquities Scheme and SCRAN. Completed 2005 {archive only}

CREE: Contextual Resource Evaluation Environment : A project arising from the JISC Portals: Investigations into User Requirements invitation to tender. Completed in 2005

ARENA: Archaeological Records of Europe Network Access Project : {archive} Funded by the EC (Culture 2000), completed in 2005

PATOIS: Publications and Archives in Teaching with Online Information Sources : Funded by JISC (5/99), completed in October 2003

Making IT Happen: proving the common information environment, : Funded by CIE, completed July 2003

Digital Archives for Scottish Archaeology: Funded by Historic Scotland, completed 2002

Mapping Information Resources : Funded by HEIRNET, completed 2000

DAPPER (Digital Archiving Pilot Project: Excavation Records) : {archive} Funded by English Heritage, completed 1999

Strategies for Digital Data: Findings and recommendations from Digital Data in Archaeology: A Survey of User Needs : {archive} Various funders, completed 1999

ARCHway This project sought to unite the archaeology journal holdings of over 20 UK university, museum and private libraries to create one searchable resource. In January 2012 the project was decommissioned, the original ARCHway tables created by the ADS can be downloaded as a ZIP Archive .

---

Partnerships

• Archaeology Academic Literacy in Virtual Environments (Archaeology ALIVE), in partnership with the Higher Education Academy

• Informing the Future of the Past 2 In partnership with English Heritage, Historic Scotland, ARIA and ALGAO. Completed 2007.

• Harvesting the Fitzwilliam, in partnership with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Funded by JISC(FAIR)

• Accessing the Virtual Museum, in partnership with the Petrie Museum, Funded by JISC (FAIR)

• The Virtual Walkabout {archive} In partnership with LTSN and the University of Leicester, completed 2003

• ArchWay {archive} In partnership with University of York Library, funded by RSLP, completed 2002

• Heirnet Register {archive} In partnership with HEIRNET, continuing

• Informing the future of the Past in partnership with English Heritage and ALGAO, funded by English Heritage, completed 2000