The ADS, Historic England and the Council for British Archaeology are pleased to announce the beta release of ADS Library.
The ADS Library is the fusion of existing datasets. These include journal and series backruns archived with the ADS, the Library of unpublished fieldwork reports (aka the Grey literature library) which is mostly populated with reports from OASIS and last but not least the British and Irish 
Archaeological Bibliography (BIAB) which is in itself a collection of different datasets which have been collected over the last hundred years.
The project to get these references online as a single resource has involved cleaning, mapping and enhancing the data from the different datasets. Allowing them to share the same data structure and hopefully give users as consistent information about each item listed in the library. Some records simply show the existence of a report or publication and others link out to the publication itself where available. There was some overlap in the combined datasets and we have endeavoured to merge records where appropriate in order to limit the existence of duplicates in the lists of results.
The ADS Library is intended to be a ‘live’ resource with records continuing to be added from numerous sources:
- OASIS reports will be uploaded to the library with the record of a report coming on completion of the OASIS record and the report following shortly after, format and review permitting.
- Journal and monograph records will be supplied regularly from the main archaeological publishers, including BAR, Oxbow and Taylor & Francis.
- Smaller regional publishers will be able to log in to the library and add their new publications as they become available.
- Volunteers will be able to request permission to add records.
- All users will be able to register and tag or comment on records.
It will also be possible to link to resources and the bibliographic record about resources in various ways:
- Each record in the library will have a direct URL so that it can be included in external databases.
- Where there are DOIs available for a publication this will be available so that the resource can be linked to in perpetuity.
- Bibliographic references within the library will be able to be exported in various bibliographic formats for import into other systems.
- Research frameworks, which in future will be updated from OASIS, will link through to the library record and publication where available.
The aim is to create a definitive resource for publications in archaeology – linking the grey with the traditionally published and keeping alive the hard work already done in producing BIAB so far.
The beta release of ADS Library will allow ADS to gather user feedback on the systems performance and design. All comments are welcome. To provide feedback please contact biab@ads.ac.uk.
