Publications by Author:

2009
From Preserving the Past to Preserving the Future: The Data-PASS Project and the Challenges of Preserving Digital Social Science Data
Myron P Gutmann, Mark Abrahamson, Margaret O Adams, Micah Altman, Caroline Arms, Kenneth Bollen, Michael Carlson, Jonathan Crabtree, Darrell Donakowski, Gary King, Jaret Lyle, Marc Maynard, Amy Pienta, Richard Rockwell, Lois Rocms-Ferrara, and Copeland H Young. 2009. “From Preserving the Past to Preserving the Future: The Data-PASS Project and the Challenges of Preserving Digital Social Science Data.” Library Trends, 57, Pp. 315–337.Abstract

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 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 on going and future research projects that will produce data. This article is about the project's history, with an emphasis on the issues that underlay the transition from looking backward to looking forward.

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Preserving Quantitative Research-Elicited Data for Longitudinal Analysis.  New Developments in Archiving Survey Data in the U.S.
Mark Abrahamson, Kenneth A Bollen, Myron P Gutmann, Gary King, and Amy Pienta. 2009. “Preserving Quantitative Research-Elicited Data for Longitudinal Analysis. New Developments in Archiving Survey Data in the U.S.” Historical Social Research, 34, 3, Pp. 51-59.Abstract

Social science data collected in the United States, both historically and at present, have often not been placed in any public archive -- even when the data collection was supported by government grants. The availability of the data for future use is, therefore, in jeopardy. Enforcing archiving norms may be the only way to increase data preservation and availability in the future.

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