With apologies for any cross-posting.
Dear Colleagues
The Performing Arts Data Service (PADS) is a newly created national
organisation which aims to collect and promote the use of digital data
resources to support research and teaching in the performing arts:
music
film
video
broadcast arts
theatre
dance
The Performing Arts Data Service is based in the Faculty of Arts at
the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK and centred upon a unique
collaboration between the Department of Theatre, Film & Television
Studies and the Department of Music. It is one of a syndicate of five
Service Providers appointed by the Arts and Humanities Data Service
(AHDS) funded by the Joint Information Systems Information Committee
(JISC) of the UK's Higher Education Funding Councils.
We are pleased to announce that the results of the first stage of our
user survey are now available on the PADS web site at:
http://pads.ahds.ac.uk/survey/Results.html
Executive Summary
Starting in September 1997 the Performing Arts Data Service (PADS)
carried out a wide-ranging survey of UK HE departments in performing
arts disciplines, aiming to investigate current usage of digital data,
identify holdings of data resources, and target services. The high
response rate (over 35%) indicates significant interest in this area
from the PADS constituency. Respondents report only very limited use
of primary networked resources such as time-based media (moving images
and sound recordings) in teaching and research. Reasons given include
inadequate hardware or network connections, lack of knowledge about
available resources, difficulty in searching for useful resources and
lack of user experience among the student body. However, secondary
resources accessed over the WWW, via CD-ROM or Telnet (e.g. library
catalogues and databases) have become relatively familiar reference
tools. Some institutions are already administering their own
collections of digital data and the PADS is encouraged by the high
percentage of respondents willing to make those resources available to
the scholarly community through the AHDS. One of the clear outcomes
of the survey was the need for a better level of information and user
education on the potential of electronic resources. PADS has an
important role to play here and would also like to collaborate with
other agencies to address this need.
We would be very grateful for your comments at this
stage, please feel free to e-mail or phone me (details below).
With regards
Catherine Owen
Collection Co-Ordinator
Performing Arts Data Service
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ
0141 330 3810
cath@pads.ahds.ac.uk
http://pads.ahds.ac.uk
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