Digital Preservation through Archival Collaboration: The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences

Abstract

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.

Where Have All the Scientific Data Gone? LIS Perspective on the Data-At-Risk Predicament

“…Data-PASS is a partnership of repositories that were created to archive, catalog, and preserve at-risk social science data. 21 The data included significant public opinion polls, voting records, large-scale surveys, and other significant social studies. Both NDIIPP and Data-PASS focused on resources that were digitized or were born digital.…”

What lies beneath?: Knowledge infrastructures in the subseafloor biosphere and beyond

“…The design of knowledge infrastructures rests on the ability to explicate the sociotechnical structures that are embodied in the data, in data practices, in technical arrangements, and in policies. These interdependencies are known to present significant risks to adoption and implementation of effective infrastructure [1,5]. The role of data as a scholarly research product is a growing concern, both practically and politically [4,44].…”

Before the Repository

“…Assessing, describing, and managing risk is a significant component of preservation infrastructure management [1,3,15,29,38,39]. The risks associated with preservation infrastructures have been defined through the literature as threats to preservation Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.…”

“…Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. JCDL '15, June 21-25, 2015 [1,2,3,13,31,32,38]. In the literature, these threats have been categorized in a number of ways: component failures, management failures, disasters, and attacks [2]; physical threats, technology threats, human threats, and institutional threats [1]; economic threat, human error, disasters and attacks [32].…”

“…This study investigates the preservation threats faced by researchers and the actions they take to mitigate them. 1. What threats to preservation have caused data loss in the research environment?…”