Background

The Edinburgh University Data Library was designated a national data centre by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in 1995 following an open competition.

EDINA has a Management Board that was set-up under a formal funding agreement between the Higher Education Funding Council for England (on behalf of all funding councils for higher and further education in the UK) and University of Edinburgh.

There is comparable agreement with respect to EDINA's sister data centre with the University of Manchester for the operation of Mimas.

The Edinburgh University Data Library has been in operation since 1983. The Data Library assists Edinburgh University users in the discovery, access, use and management of research datasets.

Our name

The name ‘EDINA’ was chosen for a variety of reasons: it had to begin with an ‘E’; it could be made into an acronym; it is the ancient, poetic name for Edinburgh.

EDINA was launched on 25th January 1996. The world also observes another anniversary on this date: the birth of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. The University’s Library Collection has given permission for us to provide you with scanned copy of the manuscript of Burns's ‘Address to Edinburgh’, which begins ‘Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!’