The History Data Service: using Internet technologies to provide access

di Oscar Struijvé
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 3 (1999), p. 99

This article introduces the activities of the History Data Service, the British national facility for preservation and dissemination of digital historical resources, integrated in the Data Archive at the University of Essex and part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service. It provides an overview of its principles and strategies to exploit information and communication technologies in order to disseminate information and to provide access to resources and documentation. Two case studies are incorporated, highlighting area’s of implementation where the Internet plays a key role. The first one deals with metadata and cataloguing developments, the second with online query and delivery facilities for special historical data collections. The article concludes with an attempt to generalise some of the issues involved, and sketches what can be expected over the next few years.