Since 2018, the British Library's Shared Repository Service has offered UK cultural heritage IROs a platform to share the wide range of research outputs produced by AHRC-funded organisations: from published works to podcasts, exhibitions to data, and blog posts to grey literature. Since 2021, the repository service has received iDAH funding, an investment that has clearly signalled AHRC's commitment to the repository service as a means of delivering iDAH goals of networked heritage research. The most recent round of iDAH funding facilitated significant improvements to the platform. It is now wholly compliant with Plan-S technical requirements and has improved the Universal Viewer functionality, which allows users to view outputs without having to download them. The repository service has also benefitted from iDAH-funded resourcing across the BL's Research Infrastructure Services team, who maintain the repository platform, onboard new partners, assist current partners and run training events across the UK to help embed Open Access principles and best data management practices throughout the sector (even globally via our online sessions). We continue to share our experiences of developing the service, and learn from others delivering similar offerings, internationally. Over the last year, IROs and other cultural heritage organisations have been encouraged by iDAH's continued funding of the repository service and we have three partners already waiting to join. Multiple IROs who are waiting to join the service have told us that the AHRC's commitment to fund the repository is critical to their decision to join the service. Our discussions have confirmed that most do not have the resource to set up their own repository and that to do so at this point, rather than considering a shared option, would require very detailed justification. AHRC iDAH funding for a further 18 months will therefore enable us to expand the service to: onboard those organisations already waiting to join and encourage others to sign up by signalling trust in the Shared Repository Service; pilot a 'general purpose' repository for smaller AHRC-funded organisations; achieve trusted digital repository certification; and continue to deliver training in scholarly communications best practice.

According to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions "National libraries are the guardians of a country's national cultural heritage. They collect, preserve and make available a country's history to all of its citizens and open a window on that country to people all over the world." National libraries have been running projects to digitize their collections for years. Due to rising energy use and cost of digital infrastructures, there is increasing pressure on libraries to reduce their energy use and emissions whilst ensuring maximum usability and accessibility. From a climate perspective, avoiding parallel operation of physical and digital infrastructures seems advisable. However, neither a physical-only nor digital-only scenario is feasible because the demand for digital media is increasing, while physical media must be kept due to legal, academic and cultural requirements. It is thus necessary to find an optimal mix of infrastructures that is economically viable, meets legal, academic and cultural requirements, simplifies user access, minimizes energy use and emissions. The ReVerDi project applies the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment approach to assess these infrastructures from an environmental, social-cultural and economic perspective. It thereby provides the scientific basis required for national libraries and other GLAM institutions to create future-proof infrastructures. The consortium consists of three research groups and three national libraries from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Country teams consisting of a research group and a library are responsible for project implementation in the respective country, while each research group is responsible for a transnational focus topic (environmental, social-cultural, economic). The three research groups have complementary backgrounds (natural sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities) and expertise (digital technologies, LCA, cultural heritage), which provide a strong foundation.

The British Library holds in its custodianship a vast collection of manuscripts and printed books from China and Central Asia that was gathered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein and other explorers in the early 20th century. This outstanding collection contains over 45,000 items written on paper, wood and other materials in many languages spoken in China and Central Asia. Since 1994, the British Library has played a leading role in the development of the International Dunhuang Project (IDP), a large-scale international network connecting partner institutions in Europe, Asia and the US holding collections related to Dunhuang and other Silk Road sites. All partners share the vision of making the images and metadata related to the collections under their custodianship fully and freely available online. This is made possible through the IDP website, a digital platform which is powered by the IDP database, provided by 4D. The 4D database operates across seven synchronised servers that are located at the British Library and the National Library of China, the Dunhuang Academy, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, Ryukoku University and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. This system relies on a sharing mechanism that allows access to images and data of the collections, whilst ensuring that each institution retains full ownership of their high resolution images. In turn, it enables a wide range of users of the IDP website to access and explore collections across the IDP network. This repository is an essential tool for researchers, professionals and students across the world working on Buddhist studies, Silk Road studies and Asian manuscripts. The Library has initiated the urgent upgrade of the IDP database across all the seven linked servers to ensure stabilisation and access by staff and external users for at least the coming 2-3 years, and full synchronisation of the system. The AHRC investment will provide the hardware upgrades necessary for this work, enabling the British Library to replace the existing IDP workstations with new machines, which will support the new IDP database in 2021, and the existing data storage units that have come to the end of their lifecycle with expanded and updated ones. This equipment is essential to British Library staff and research fellows working on the Stein and other collections uploaded in the IDP database. This work will ensure the sustainability of the IDP activities for the years ahead, the safe running of core operations, and access by staff and external users to the metadata and images held in separate institutions.

In the last decades of the 20th Century, Professor Ann Oakley's ground-breaking Becoming a Mother project reshaped thinking about motherhood, established a multi-disciplinary area of academic research, and provoked a sea-change in practice and policy around maternity care. In a time of accelerating social change, this project takes forward that legacy. We take an inter-generational, longitudinal, and historically comparative approach to understand better the lasting implications of women's transition to motherhood, as well as the continuities and changes in women's experiences over the last 50 years in the UK. We will do this through both the re-analysis of Oakley's previous research and new data-collection. In a phased process, and carried out by a team based at the leading UCL Social Research Institute (including Oakley herself) this 4.5-year project has the following archival, methodological, data collection and engagement-based aims: To compile, digitise, transcribe, catalogue, archive and re-analyse data from the original Becoming a Mother study (and associated studies). This will be in collaboration with the British Library (our official partner) as part of their acquisition of Oakley's archive. Based on (1), conduct follow-up interviews with those original mothers (and any grand/daughters who have become mothers) to identify intergenerational changes in the transition to motherhood, potentially over three generations. Based on (1) and (2), in combination with a historical policy review, develop a new interview schedule and conduct a methodologically similar study with an intersectionally diverse sample of mothers recruited via the same hospital in London to reflect and reveal historical change in the experience of first-time motherhood '50 years on'. Drawing on (1) (2) and (3), to develop and share our findings with a wide audience through: academic and non-academic publications, including policy briefs; an embedded television documentary and podcast; and a launch event (in the House of Lords) and dissemination event (at the British Library) publicised in The Times, Mumsnet and BBC platforms, including Radio 4's Woman's Hour. Substantively, this project will contribute to understanding the transition to (and experience of) motherhood, contextualised by changes to parenting culture (Faircloth 2013, 2014, 2021). It will also strengthen social science methodology, showcasing ways of collecting and analysing qualitative data over time, ensuring the legacy of historically important data-sets. In curating a research-ready data-set for re-use, the project serves not only as a study of motherhood, but as a study of the study of motherhood. We anticipate our '50 years on' study will be equally impactful as the original: providing landmark evidence, and enhancing the capacity of social science to inform policy and shape the development of equitable and efficient services. In addressing early motherhood holistically (rather than through 'maternity care' or 'Early Childhood Education') we offer an innovative perspective on women's well-being and fertility trends. Improvements in this area have an unusual capacity for far-reaching effects: promoting family and community health, responsible citizenship and the potential to enhance human flourishing. In collaboration with the our media collaborators; politicians in both Houses of Parliament; leading activist groups and charities, and with the British Library as our partner, this project will produce significant and wide-ranging outputs for a variety of users and generate new knowledge around motherhood. This will have a lasting impact on public discourse and social policy, offering us a timely portrait of how motherhood - and indeed Britain - have changed.

The British Library's Shared Repository Service was developed to support cultural heritage organisations in sharing their data and opening up their research. Piloted through 2018-2021, and supported with initial AHRC iDAH funding in 2021, it has continued to bring iDAH further towards inclusion of heritage and IRO research. Developments in the previous 12 months have improved functionality for users, branding options for partners, and metadata. During that period, conversations with other IROs about future use of the shared repository and bringing their research into the platform have brought them closer towards on boarding, and our interviews to understand how to meet needs beyond the IRO Consortium have identified the next steps to further strengthen open data and scholarship across UK heritage research. Now IROs understand the future of iDAH, more organisations are keen to move towards set up. Further effort is now required over the next 12 months to continue improving the repository service, ramp up the inclusion of partner organisations and deliver vital skills development to IRO colleagues in support of increased use of repository services, and key competencies for open scholarship. The Shared Repository Service will allow for adherence to Open Access and data sharing mandates, while providing institution-specific front-end repositories to heritage organisations with nationally- and internationally-recognised brands, allowing partners to showcase the research produced by their expert staff. This research is produced through business-as-usual activity, as well as from collaborative research projects, and other activity such as artist in residence programmes. The British Library's Shared Repository Service aggregates that research content across partners to make participation a collective activity that increases the visibility of heritage research from across the UK. This creates a scaling of benefits while allowing a maintenance of organisational branding and impact.