ATSIDA strives to provide access to the increasing and varied range of electronic resources that fulfil the scope and criteria outlined above. Datasets are obtained, or made available, in two ways.
- Direct deposit by individuals and organisations: ATSIDA undertakes a program to increase the holdings of ATSIDA according to the objectives outlined in the Scope of Collections (see Section 1 above). These datasets are accessioned into ATSIDA and made available through the usual Archive procedures.
- Information provision: ATSIDA recognises that it has limited resources for the acquisition of datasets. In addition, there is a proliferation of datasets resources of interest to social scientists that are managed and made available elsewhere, particularly through the World Wide Web. To this end ATSIDA is exploring the option of introducing a program of discovery of, and mechanisms for pointing to, other electronic datasets collections of interest.