University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

From Preserving the Past to Preserving the Future: The Data-PASS Project and the Challenges of Preserving Digital Social Science Data

Gutmann, Myron P.; Abrahamson, Mark; Adams, Margaret O.; Altman, Micah; Arms, Caroline R.; Bollen, Kenneth; Carlson, Michael; Crabtree, Jonathan; Donakowski, Darrell; King, Gary; Lyle, Jared; Maynard, Marc; Pienta, Amy; Rockwell, Richard; Timms-Ferrara, Lois; Young, Copeland H.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/13593

Description

Title
From Preserving the Past to Preserving the Future: The Data-PASS Project and the Challenges of Preserving Digital Social Science Data
Author(s)
  • Gutmann, Myron P.
  • Abrahamson, Mark
  • Adams, Margaret O.
  • Altman, Micah
  • Arms, Caroline R.
  • Bollen, Kenneth
  • Carlson, Michael
  • Crabtree, Jonathan
  • Donakowski, Darrell
  • King, Gary
  • Lyle, Jared
  • Maynard, Marc
  • Pienta, Amy
  • Rockwell, Richard
  • Timms-Ferrara, Lois
  • Young, Copeland H.
Issue Date
2009
Keyword(s)
  • Digital preservation
  • National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
  • Social science data
Abstract
Social science data are an unusual part of the past, present, and future of digital preservation. They are both an unqualified success, due to long-lived and sustainable archival organizations, and in need of further development because not all digital content is being preserved. This article is about the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS), a project supported by the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), which is a partnership of five major U.S. social science data archives. Broadly speaking, Data-PASS has the goal of ensuring that at-risk social science data are identified, acquired, and preserved, and that we have a future-oriented organization that could collaborate on those preservation tasks for the future. Throughout the life of the Data-PASS project we have worked to identify digital materials that have never been systematically archived, and to appraise and acquire them. As the project has progressed, however, it has increasingly turned its attention from identifying and acquiring legacy and at-risk social science data to identifying ongoing and future research projects that will produce data. This article is about the project’s history, with an emphasis of the issues that underlay the transition from looking backward to looking forward.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/13593
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2009 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Owning Collections

Library Trends 57 (3) Winter 2009: Library of Congress NDIIP Program PRIMARY
Library Trends 57 (3) Winter 2009: Library of Congress NDIIP Program. Edited by Patricia Cruse and Beth Sandore