As part of The Data Archive the HDS provides a safe home for data. But data needs to be disseminated to researchers and teachers in order to justify and safeguard this home in the long term.
Data needs users.
Therefore one of the functions of the HDS is to 'broker' relationships between resources and users. It follows that potential users should be able to locate and identify data and assess their relevance. The emphasis in this paper will be on the characteristics of services and systems which enable this 'relationship brokering', primarily from a user perspective. In particular characteristics of our approach which offer potential for generalisation and formalisation will be presented and discussed. The data- and information needs of humanities researchers and the various ways in which those can be addressed play a central role in our efforts in this area.