In 1999 ADS, English Heritage (now Historic England) and the Research Support Libraries Programme launched an 18-month pilot project called OASIS. With an acronym derived from Online AccesS to the Index of archaeological investigationS, this set out to create a single index of grey literature that could be searched online via ADS. A special form would facilitate continued collection of data in the longer term. OASIS has become a cornerstone of British archaeology. For nearly 20 years the index has been used to organise the records of fieldwork and research projects, allowing information from those doing the work to be passed on to the relevant historic environment records (HERs), national bodies and the ADS.
Between 2016 and 2020 a new project, called HERALD, was funded to establish a new functional specification for OASIS.
