news and events

Data-PASS to Present Poster at 2008 ASA Annual Meeting

Lois Timms-Ferrara will present a poster at the 2008 American Sociological Association annual meeting highlighting surveys that have become available as a result of the Data-PASS initiative. To date, the Data-PASS project has identified about 2,000 relevant studies. Of these, some 200 already have been processed and are available for secondary analysis. Many of these data have not been thoroughly examined, yet offer a plethora of opportunities for analytical study. For more information about the conference, please visit the ASA 2008 Annual Meeting website.
2008-03-24

Data-PASS Presentations at the e-Social Science 2007 Conference

Data-PASS partners presented two papers at the e-Social Science 2007 Conference. Myron Gutmann, Nancy McGovern, Bryan Beecher, and Trivellore Raghunathan presented "How Safe is Safe Enough when we Preserve Social Science Data?" Jon Crabtree, Marc Maynard, and Lois Timms-Ferrara presented "Developing Partnerships in the Social Sciences: Data Archives and Private Research Organizations".

For more information about the conference, please visit the e-Social Science 2007 Conference web site.
2007-10-17

Library of Congress Profiles Myron Gutmann as a Digital Preservation Pioneer

Myron Gutmann, principal investigator of the Data-PASS project and director of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), was recently profiled by the Library of Congress as a digital preservation pioneer.

"While we have a fair amount of social science data preserved," the Library of Congress quotes Dr. Gutmann, "[unfortunately] quite a lot that is important is probably lost. That's why we're trying to build a partnership that would systematically try to rescue the at-risk content of social science, and to set up a system going forward that would protect these investments."
2007-08-11

Data-PASS Project Funding Renewed

The Data-PASS project received funding from the Library of Congress, through its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), to extend work for 18 additional months. During the extension, the Data-PASS project will continue its efforts of rescuing at-risk social science content and solidifying the partnership while also building the foundation to ensure the preservation of content created in the present and future.
2007-08-06

Data-PASS at the 2007 SAA Annual Meeting

Margaret Adams, Micah Altman, Jon Crabtree, Darrell Donakowski, and Marc Maynard will be presenting information about the project at 71st Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The panel discussion, "Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences: A Model for Collaboration", will be moderated by Amy Pienta and will focus on the challenges each archive has faced in identifying, appraising, acquiring, and preserving important digital data resources. It will also discuss how the Partnership operates and our attempts to build relationships with private sector and non-profit data organizations, as well as individual researchers. The annual meeting, ARCHIVES / CHICAGO 2007, will be held in Chicago, Illinois, August 28-September 2, 2007. For more information about the conference, you can visit the ARCHIVES / CHICAGO 2007 website.
2007-07-24

Data-PASS at the 2007 IASSIST Meeting

Micah Altman, Jon Crabtree, Darrell Donakowski, and Marc Maynard will be presenting information about the project at IASSIST 2007: Building Global Knowledge with Open Data conference. The panel discussion, "Data-PASS: Collaborating to Preserve At-Risk Data", will be moderated by Amy Pienta and will focus on successes and barriers encountered in the first three years and the relationships we are building with private sector and non-profit data organizations, as well as individual researchers. The annual meeting for the International Association for Social Science Information Service & Technology (IASSIST), will be held in Montreal, Quebec, May 15-18. For more information about the conference, you can visit the IASSIST 2007 website.
2007-04-27

Data-PASS Presentation at DigCcurr 2007

Micah Altman, Jon Crabtree, Darrell Donakowski, and Marc Maynard will be presenting information about the project at DigCcurr 2007: an international symposium in digital curation in Chapel Hill, NC; April 18-20, 2007. The paper, "Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences: A Model for Collaboration," will be part of the session: Digital Curation in Practice. For more information about the workshop, you can visit the workshop website.
2007-04-01

Data-PASS Joint Catalog Now Available

The Data-PASS partners are pleased to announce the availability of their joint catalog. The catalog currently encompasses the entire holdings of the ICPSR, HMDC, Murray Research Archives, and the Odum Institute. It enables anyone to search and browse the entire holdings of these partners. You can also download and analyze many publicly accessible studies. For additional information, please visit the joint catalog page.
2006-06-30

Help ICPSR Identify the Most Important Social Science Data

As part of its commitment to expand its social science data collection, ICPSR is partnering with leading academic and archival institutions to create the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS). Data-PASS is sponsored by the Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program with the goal of identifying and preserving classic social science data. Many, and perhaps most, of the studies that have been conducted since the beginning of modern social science research have not been archived. We are asking individual researchers from the social science research community to tell us about the most significant studies in their disciplines or areas of expertise. Important social science data can be defined as meeting at least one of the following criteria:

  1. theoretically and/or methodologically ground breaking
  2. representative of national, important regional, or understudied populations
  3. part of a major policy evaluation
  4. part of a seminal collection
  5. tied to unrepeated or rare events

Please contact us and voice your opinion about the important social science studies in your discipline or area of expertise. Together, we can ensure that the vital history of social science data will continue to be available to future generations of researchers.
2006-04-07