IASSIST: A new archiving guide for people who love data

Published: 2022-05-31

Logo IASSIST Conference 2022On 7–10 June, the IASSIST 2022 conference takes place in Gothenburg, with SND as their host organization. The theme for this year’s conference is “Data by Design – Building a Sustainable Data Culture”. Several members of the SND staff will be present at the conference. In the weeks leading up to the conference, we will present some of the sessions with SND staff.

 


 

Photo of Ilze LaceIlze Lace, research data advisor at SND and senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Gothenburg, will participate in the “The CESSDA Data Archiving Guide: A resource for people who love data” workshop on 7 June.

Tell us a little about your presentation at the IASSIST conference

I’ll be part of a workshop where we introduce a new Data Archiving Guide that we’ve developed in CESSDA. The guide is a work in progress, which we will test together with the participants of the workshop, to see how well the guide works and if it can be applied to different situations depending on the participants’ experiences and problems.

The guide offers recommendations for solutions and shortcuts. It contains an FAQ with questions about archiving that may be important when you meet researchers, for example, policies for data archiving and advice for how you can work with the OAIS standard for data archiving.

Why is it important to share and discuss this with other people?

The guide is a living document that has to be useful for all who work in social science data archives. There are staff from some CESSDA archives in the working group that's developed the guide, but it’s important to receive input from other users, too. 

What are you looking forward to at the IASSIST conference and what do you hope to take away from it?

I haven’t picked anything specific yet, but it’s a great feeling to be part of the largest event in this field, and to discuss new ideas and learn something new. I really look forward to meeting in person again, nothing can compare to that.

Is there anything else you want to add?

I think that the IASSIST conference in Gothenburg harmonizes really well with what SND does at a national level. It’s good for us to include the international perspective in our work.

CESSDA is one of the main sponsors of the IASSIST conference and have several items of their own on the agenda. For instance, five panels and one side meeting: