In March 2020, a project to redevelop the ADS Library was completed.
The Library holds over 100,000 open access documents including unpublished fieldwork reports – the so-called ‘grey literature’ – as well as e-prints of journals and monographs; since 2015 there have been 680,372 downloads. The redevelopment has focussed on enhancing accessibility, and creating a more intuitive framework for enabling resource discovery. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) have been create for most of the Journal articles within the Library, and in general given a more prominent role in a push towards encouraging better citation practices.
In late April the ADS was successful in our application for Core Trust Seal (CTS) certification, a universal catalogue of requirements that reflects the core characteristics of trustworthy data repositories. The full transcript of the ADS application is available from the CTS website. This assessment ensures confidence that the procedures, processes and workflows adhered to are ‘fit for purpose’ and that our community can depend upon ADS as a "trusted digital repository". At the time of writing this means that the ADS is the only accredited repository for heritage data in the UK, and indeed is one of only five UK organisations to be CTS certified.