What are the best practices for selecting an ICPSR Official Representative (OR)?

A number of institutions, both current and joining members, have contacted us to inquire about how best to select an OR for their institution. Our first recommendation is to review the Roles and Responsibilities of the Official Representative section found on the OR Handbook page. This summary tends to narrow the field of potential candidates.

Best Practices

ICPSR enables member institutions to identify two individuals as administrative contacts - the Official Representative (OR) and the Designated Representative (DR). We encourage member institutions to fill both contact positions and have found that the best combination tends to include a representative from the library and a representative from an academic department in the social sciences.

ORs and DRs need not be fluent in statistical software and data analysis. An ability to refer data users to individuals/resources on campus that maintain these skills is all that is needed if the OR/DR does not have these skill-sets.

Perhaps the most critical proficiency the OR/DR can achieve for his/her user community is a profound familiarity with the content/resources contained in ICPSR and its archives and projects, and the willingness to promote and analyze utilization of ICPSR resources.

In some cases, institutions have initially elected accounts payable or systems-related individuals for these positions as they are responsible for the invoice transaction. Tenure in the OR/DR position among these functions is usually short-lived since local data users often seek out the OR/DR for questions related to data use and substantive and methodological issues. Moreover, ICPSR enables member institutions to identify an Invoice Recipient who will receive invoice-related information directly.

Communications

The OR and DR are automatically subscribed to our ICPSR Email lists, receiving the most up-to-date information on our data resources. Still more faculty and staff can subscribe to icpsr-announce to receive these same updates less the purely administrative announcements.