In our experience, one of the most effective tactics for eliciting datasets for the collection is a simple librarian-researcher interview. In this poster, we share a set often questions that a librarian can use as a starting point for such a “data interview”. It is a practical tool to draw out information that needs to be considered in order to evaluate the suitability of a dataset for the collection and the requirements for the infrastructure and services that will be needed for data curation.
Our overriding goal is to create an Inventory of data that are at risk, and whose unique scientific information is in danger of being lost to posterity. We define "data at risk" in this context as scientific data which are not in a format that permits full electronic access to the information which they contain. Such data may be inherently non-digital (e.g. handwritten or photographic), on near-obsolete digital media (such as magnetic tapes) or insufficiently described (lacking meta-data). Some born-digital data can also be considered "at risk" if they cannot be ingested into managed databases because they lack adequate formatting or metadata.
SCAPE is devoted to enhancing the state-of-the-art of long-term digital preservation by developing an infrastructure and tools for scalable preservation actions (the SCAPE Platform and Components), and a framework for automated, quality assured preservation workflows. Additionally, these components will be integrated with a policy-based Pr
The Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS) is a broad-based partnership devoted to identifying, acquiring and preserving data at-risk of being lost to the social science research community. The partners coordinate identification, acquisition, and cataloging of data at risk; develop best practices for data archiving; and create a shared infrastructure and practices for cataloging and preservation. Data-PASS is led by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut, the Howard W. Odum Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the Henry A. Murray Research Archive, a member of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, the National Archives and Records Administration, and the Harvard-MIT Data Center.