This poster provides an overview of the ongoing rescue of
valuable digital collections that had been taken down and
consequently lost to general access.
The University of Glasgow was home to the Arts and Humanities
Data Service Performing Arts (AHDS Performing Arts) [1], one
of the five arts and humanities data centres that constitute the Arts
and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). Since 1996 AHDS
supported the creation, curation, preservation and reuse of digital
materials for the UK Arts and Humanities research and teaching
community. AHDS Performing Arts, based in Glasgow, supported
research, learning and teaching in music, dance, theatre, radio,
film, television, and performance for thirteen years. Working with
the AHDS Executive, relevant performing arts collections have
been ingested, documented, preserved, and where possible made
available via the AHDS Cross Search Catalogue and Website to
researchers, practitioners, and the general public. Furthermore
strong relationships were developed with research and teaching
community upon a scoping study investigating user needs [2].
In 2007 the co-funders of the AHDS - Arts and Humanities
Research Council (AHRC) for the UK and the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) - withdrew their funding. A detailed
risk assessment report was produced in response to the
withdrawal of core funding [3], but to no avail. When the AHDS
funding stopped, online access to these cultural resources
eventually became discontinued [4].
In 2010, the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University
of Glasgow joined the EU-funded ECLAP project to ensure that at
least part of these resources could be accessible for the long term
by scholars and practitioners in the performing arts arena, and by
the general public. Below we briefly describe the ECLAP project,
the AHDS Performing Arts collections progressively available
through it and some thoughts on providing preservation through
access for this type of digital cultural resources