The work of the ADS is overseen by a Management Committee made up of representatives of key stakeholders, funders, and user communities. The Committee meets once a year, attended by the ADS internal management team. In the most recent meeting (4th October 2023) I provided a short overview of achievements of the previous 12 months, and then the developments for the next cycle.
In putting the presentation together I was genuinely excited about the work we’ve been doing, and will do, and the impact this will have on our users and depositors. The following is a shortened version of that presentation, focussing on what I hope we’ll achieve next year and that will be of interest to our user community.
A new Archsearch
Since 1998 Archsearch has been the central point of cross-searching ADS material and a selection of other regional and national inventories. Since it was first launched in 1998 the Archsearch interface has been through four iterations, but with the most recent version being deployed in 2011. It’s testament to the hard-work of the team, most notably Paul Young, that the application has persisted across a multitude of updates to server infrastructures. However for many years we’ve known that Archsearch needs a serious refresh.
With the return of core funding as part of the UKRI’s IDAH programme we now have the staff resources to make this change, and through work undertaken in the EU-funded AriadnePlus, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Towards a National Collection project Unpath’d Waters, we also have the tools and experience to do so. This fifth iteration of Archsearch will reuse the infrastructure of the Ariadne Portal and for the first time in ADS history utilize a triplestore for storage, and then adapt the front-end interface to provide a modern and comprehensive interface to cross-search ADS records as well as national heritage records.
It’s anticipated that the new Archsearch will be deployed on the ADS site by September 2024, and be accompanied by a new generation of guides and tutorials. We’ll be releasing more information about this work over the coming year.
New code framework for Archives
As noted above, the Archsearch interface was last updated in 2011 at the same time as a wider development of the ADS Archives, by which I mean the pages where you can access files and metadata such as https://doi.org/10.5284/1115904
This update, cryptically named project redsquid, has been periodically tweaked and refreshed over the years but fundamentally remained the same in terms of look and feel. However the pages have begun to date slightly, especially in terms of modern accessibility requirements, and since the launch of the new look ADS website in Winter 2023 have been a key candidate for improvement.
A small piece of work over Summer 2023 has now developed into a larger overhaul of archive pages and implementing the new styles used by the main website. The basic user experience remains the same – with downloads pages presenting files in what we hope is an intuitive and easy to use experience. One significant area of improvement is the metadata page, which has been remodeled to better fit FAIR requirements.
We expect to launch the new style in early 2024. In the first instance the new framework will be used for newly deposited archives, with older archives gradually being migrated over to the new style on a longer timetable.
Improvements to the ADS Library
The Library is one of the most visited parts of the ADS, combining unpublished reports (primarily from OASIS), archived copies of journals and monographs, and the historic BIAB database. As a database that has to deal with a myriad of data sources – including messy or partial metadata – a number of pragmatic choices have been made over the years in order to present a unified and consistent web application. However we are well aware of issues and improvements from simple user requests regarding filtering and ordering of information, the ongoing request to resolve duplications and false matches of authors, through to bigger “user stories” about how people want to search the database.
The whole team has been working on a number of improvements that we’re aiming to release in 2024. The most exciting of these is, finally, a map! Originally developed by Teagan Zoldoske and Jo Gilham, the first iteration that will be released will show unpublished reports only, primarily as we hold very few grid references for journal articles and monographs. However, georeferencing relevant site-based articles is a key priority and something we’ll be working on with expert partners in ATRIUM, a new EU-funded project.
The emphasis on enhancing discovery of resources within the Library is a task that is being led by Jenny O’Brien and Olivia Foster. Over the Autumn they have been looking at tidying the metadata terminologies used in the library, and developing a new facet for a simple general classification of the report – for example community archaeology, maritime archaeology and so on. This is in tandem with better ways of understanding the content of the report, and then the significance relating to research themes.
It’s important to note that this won’t be a single deployment with all features suddenly in place! Rather, we’ll be deploying improvements in linear sequential phases. However the map will be one of the first new features!
ADS Ingest
Perhaps the single biggest project over 2023/2024 will be the continuing development of the replacement for ADS-easy. First active in 2014 this system has been the primary method of sending us data but is not in urgent need of an upgrade. A preliminary user survey undertaken in 2022 has been followed up by several months of development on a new system, to be called ADS Ingest. The development is based on key improvements requested by users to make depositing with the ADS simpler.
We’re still a long way from public release, but by the end of this reporting year (September 2024) we aim to have an internal development version ready for review. Calls for external testing and a roadmap for release in 2024/2025 will be made in due course.
New ways to access metadata
All of the improvements discussed above are all interlinked by the ADS infrastructure. Over recent years we have invested in improvements to our systems, with an emphasis on storing spatial metadata. With new OASIS and the forthcoming replacement of ADS-easy we’ll now be collecting spatial metadata for reports and archives at a higher standard than ever before (geometries for extent of area). Our ongoing work with HS2 is also heavily tied to presenting the entirety of the HS2 archive via a single map-driven interface.
New and revised systems means we can also innovate more than ever before so as to increase the reuse potential of ADS (meta)data. One part of this is better internal search interfaces, the other is making sure our metadata is shared and accessible. Metadata will continue to be shared with external aggregators but also made available via a new range of services starting with WMS/WFS for archives. This will be followed by a user survey to identify what other services, such as APIs, are useful to our users.
Staying in touch
Progress reports and calls for participation will be forthcoming throughout the year, and you can stay informed via the ADS News and Events page and the ADS Newsletter.
