Peter Granda

Archival Assistant Director

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/

ICPSR and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library: Two Decades of Collaboration

What I plan to discuss

• Case study of collaboration between two different kinds of archives

» How the collaboration began» What was accomplished» Current activities

• Advantages of this collaboration for ICPSR and for the research community

ICPSR and the Ford Library: Earlier Collaboration

• Preamble: a “case study” in the spirit of recent “New Skills for a Digital Era” colloquium recently held by SAA

• Digitization of records from NARA• Creating Digital Objects: Why do so and

how done:– Cost of Living in the United States, 1917-1919– Study of Consumer Purchases, 1935-1936

ICPSR and the Ford Library: Earlier Accomplishments

• Creation of two quantitative data collections ready for use by the social science research community

• ‘New’ historical resource for researchers• Deed of gift of new digital versions of paper

records to NARA• SIGNIFICANT increase in usage of the

research facilities at the Ford Library!!!

ICPSR and the Ford Library: Current Activities

• Papers of Robert M. Teeter: Survey Researcher and Campaign Strategist for Presidents Nixon and Ford; Political Advisor to George H.W. Bush

• ‘Born-digital’ materials of a certain kind• Importance of these materials?• What to do with them?

Teeter materials of interest to ICPSR• Coded numeric data representing responses

to survey questions stored in a format that can be read by standard software statistical packages (e.g., SAS, SPSS, Stata)

• Printouts of tables generated by such software

• Questionnaires, reports, and other materials associated with the conduct of these surveys

Record Appraisal• Basic question: Should records which serve

different research purposes and different analytic strategies reside in the same archive?

• How to coordinate appraisal responsibilities between two archives?

• What steps should these archives take to inform each other of the appraisal decisions that they make to ingest various types of records?

Descriptive Standards• ICPSR metadata standards• Bibliographic citations/MARC compatibility?• Defining and describing the differences in archival

‘objects’ when records vary significantly in structure and type

• Make certain that there are permanent connections between these objects and that these connections are visible to users

Digital Preservation• Obvious differences in preserving digital vs.

paper records: the meaning of “original” materials

• Are any of the Teeter paper records suitable for the creation of electronic versions?

• Survey questionnaires• Computer tabulations• Reports

• Continuous preservation necessary to assure continuous access

User Access

• From my point of view: the biggest advantage of this type of collaboration

• Researcher access to the fullest set of records in formats most suitable for investigation and analysis

• Integrate portions of Web sites so that users can easily navigate between the two

• Connect all record types together: For example, user finds interesting poll to analyze and also can obtain Teeter analyses and reports based on this poll

Conclusions• Shared responsibilities for preservation, record

management, and user support• Shared resources: have archives do what they do best• Use coordinated set of finding aids to facilitate searching

by researchers• Provide resource-rich response to such research

questions as:• Can I trace the history of political polling over the last 30 years

to see how it has affected national campaigns?• How have political polls used advances in survey methodology

to increase their accuracy and value?• How have these polls affected the public regarding survey

response rates?