Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences: A Model for Collaboration

The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) is a partnership of six major U.S. institutions with a strong focus on archiving social science research. The partnership is supported by an award from the Library of Congress through its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The goal of DataPASS 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. This paper will discuss three of the significant products that have emerged from this partnership: (1) procedures for identifying and selecting “at risk” digital materials identified by the Partnership (2) the identification of “at-risk” social science data collections from individual researchers, as well as private research organizations, (3) the design and implementation of a shared catalog describing the data holdings of all partners. We conclude with some brief comments on the partners’ future plans to develop an inter-archival syndicated storage service.