USIA Office of Research Surveys, 1952-99NARA –Roper Center Collaboration: An Update
The Data-PASS partnership engages in collaboration at three levels: coordinated operations, development of best practices, and creation and use of open-source shared infrastructure. The first talk in the session provides an update on our search for replication and distributed storage technologies for preservation. Systems like iRODS and LOCKSS can be developed into preservation environments for social science data archives. The key when implementing these preservation environments will be the modification of existing archive policies and procedures to reflect new dependence on collaboration. The second talk discusses the collection of international public opinion data collected by the USIA, which began in 1952 and extended through 1999. Until recently, these data were difficult to access. The Roper Center and the National Archives and Records Administration have identified, rescued, and made these data available to the research community. The third talk describes a new alliance between ICPSR and Institutional Repositories (IRs) with the goal of preserving and re-using social science data. This talk focuses on the formation of these partnerships; how an archiving guide for IRs will be developed; and new services that ICPSR can offer to IRs to assist with social science data. The fourth talk summarizes the efforts of ICPSR and the Roper Center to migrate punched card data to modern preservation formats. This presentation focuses on the recovery of the Cornell Retirement Study, a longitudinal study that began in 1952. The final talk discusses the current collaborative structure of Data-PASS, our agreements, infrastructure, and the services and infrastructure available to new partners.