Darrell Donakowski
Research Associate
ICPSR, University of Michigan
ICPSR: Archiving our Social Science Digital History

Presentation Abstract

Established in 1962, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. This presentation will address the ICPSR experience in preserving and processing data. Topics will include past and current procedures for archiving and distributing the data. Challenges, such as those that stem from the tension between the research community's desire for immediate access and the amount and cost of processing, will also be presented. Details of a new and innovative partnership that has been created among six major social science data repositories in the United States, joined together with the Library of Congress will also be discussed, as well as the challenges in identifying "at-risk" data and the process of selecting data for the project.