The DataPASS Partnership: Collaboration, Agreements, and More

1
The Data-PASS PartnershipCollaboration,
Agreements,and More

• Myron Gutmann
• ICPSR
• University of Michigan

2
My Story

• One overall partnership
• One Collaboration Agreement (for now)
• Effective partnership activities
• Multi-faceted set of collaborations
• Some involve all the partners
• Others are partner-to-partner and involve subsets
  of the partners
• Question how to ensure future activities given
  funding and diverse goals

3
The Data-PASS Partnership

• ICPSR (Michigan)
• Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social
  Science (North Carolina)
• Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
  (Connecticut)
• Murray Archive/Institute for Quantitative Social
  Science (Harvard)
• National Archives and Records Administration (US
  Government)

4
Partnership Goals Overview

• Shared Collection Development
• Identification
• Appraisal
• Best location for content
• Ingest processing
• Shared Technology
• Common catalog
• Archive tools
• Long-term preservation
• Replication

5
Articles of Collaboration(Concluded fall 05)

• Membership
• Management Structure
• Addition/Withdrawal of Membership
• Subcontracting
• Reporting
• Cost Sharing
• Funding Accounting Requirements
• Technology

6
Articles, continued

• Data Intellectual Rights
• Transfer Protocols
• Disputes
• Term (Duration)
• Post-Contract Commitments
• Amendments

7
Now, how it really works

• Operations Steering Committees function very
  well
• Lots of informal discussion, with little
  reference to the formal agreement
• Much all-partner activity discussion
• Much partner-to-partner collaboration
• Why?
• Well-developed field with long-standing contacts
• Rapid change requires flexible approaches

8
All-Partner Activities Follow Original Outline

• Collection Development as Core
• Identification, appraisal, best ingest
• Gradual progress from past to future
• Technology investment through Harvards VDC and
  Dataverse
• Tools
• Common Catalog
• Shared replication as critical future activity

9
Partner-to-Partner Ties have Exceeded Expectations

• Roper NARA USIA Data Project
• Roper Odum ICPSR work on Private Research
  Organizations
• Harvard Odum Technology testing partnership
• Roper ICPSR Joint Poll Processing Activities

10
Challenges for the Future

• How to sustain the future without Library of
  Congress funding as motive
• Does everything need to be written?
• Are we the Three Musketeers ?
• Is it all for one and one for all all the time?
• Or do two-way and three-way collaborations arise
  and develop within a broader framework over time?
• In this context, how do we add partners?