After a summer-long period of internal testing, the ADS-easy system has been linked into the main ADS site. So we are now moving into a phase of testing by external colleagues from the commercial sector who have kindly said that they will use the system to submit a selected number of archives to the ADS over the next few months. It will be an interesting time as we try and assess how easy it is for our guinea-pig-depositors to get to grips with the new form, whether they find it onerous or quite straightforward – the latter we hope. Here at the ADS, we too will be expecting a steep learning curve in dealing with deposits that come with very little face-to-face or email-to-email interaction with our depositors. Will we be able to produce the sort of archive that they want or expect and will it come in at the right price to satisfy the depositors at the same time as covering our archiving costs.
So if you decide to start using the form to deposit please bear with us in this period of Beta release.
