The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) is a partnership of five major U.S. institutions with a strong focus on archiving social science research. The Library of Congress supports the partnership through its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The goal of Data-PASS is to acquire and preserve data at risk of being lost to the research community, from opinion polls, voting records, large-scale surveys, and other social science studies. In this paper we discuss the agreements, processes, and infrastructure that provide a foundation for the collaboration. About the Partnership An international movement to archive, preserve, and share data emerged over forty years ago when digital data began to appear in volume. 1 This movement is undergoing a resurgence, as the social sciences shift anew toward a reliance on vast amounts of digital data. Still, we cannot say that even a majority of the digital social science research content created since the revolution in sample surveys and production of digital data has been preserved, nor that newly created data will be preserved. Why is this so? Many corporate and academic researchers assume that data they generate are their property and that they have limited obligations to share their data with others or to ensure its preservation. Some individual researchers are reluctant to deposit their data in archives because they fear competition. Some lack the time or expertise to prepare the metadata required for effective sharing. And some simply do not recognize the long-term value of their data. Institutional data producers may be under legal obligation to protect proprietary information. And some data just falls through the cracks. A huge quantity of digital social science research content lives on, for the moment, solely as files in the computers of individual researchers or of research institutions, or quite possibly as video tapes, floppy disks, or punchcards (etc.) in bookcases, libraries, and warehouses. If research sponsors, producers, and data curators do not take steps to preserve it, it will be lost forever. 2 It needs to be identified, located, assessed, acquired, processed, preserved, and shared. 1 For an history of the early development of this community, see Margaret O Adams, "The Origins and Early Years of IASSIST", IASSIST Quarterly 30 no. 3 (2006), 5-15. 2 The members of this partnership represent the U.S. social science data archives tradition. There are other emerging approaches to preservation, including "self"-archiving, and institutional archiving, and, more recently virtual archiving.

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The purpose of the this article is to discuss the impact that online technologies are having and will continue to have on the way secondary analysis of survey research is performed. The authors discuss the validity of secondary analysis of survey research studies and the effect that online technology has on such analyses. Before reviewing current online public opinion sources, the authors make the argument that online services are becoming increasingly important for secondary analysis. Finally, the authors present a model indicating where online services can go in the future given the technology that is available today. Ultimately, it is believed that the Internet is currently underexploited for its capacity to aid secondary analysis. The authors advocate making survey data more easily available online to all potential users. This entails varying the format and depth of data so that users find sources suitable to their needs. It also entails the use of desktop technology to store and analyze survey research data and making that technology, or the applications that are developed through that technology, available to other users via computer networks, primarily via the Internet.

Since 2008, Qatar University’s Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI), has been collecting nationally representative survey data on social and economic issues. In 2017, SESRI leadership established an Archiving Unit tasked with data preservation and dissemination both for internal purposes and with the intent of disseminating select data to the public for secondary analysis.   This paper reviews the lessons learned from creating a data archive in an emerging economy where both cultural and political sensitivities exist amid varied groups of stakeholders.  Challenges have included recruiting trained personnel, developing policies for data selection and workflow objectives, processing restricted and non-restricted datasets and metadata, data security issues, and promoting usage. Additionally, there is hope that the presence of the Archiving Unit adds value for other SESRI research staff involved in the design, collection, documentation, and processing of studies. After successfully addressing these challenges over the past year, the Archive met its objective to launch a data center at the Institute’s website (http://sesri.qu.edu.qa) and to make multiple datasets available for public download from it. Also, to be discussed are the tools, processes and leveraging of resources that are being implemented as the archiving process continues to evolve.

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.