Authors: Stefan Müller, Astrid Recker, GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences Digital curation and preservation efforts are futile if the objective of the preservation process is unclear. Working under the assumption that it will not be possible to preserve digital objects unchanged, in their “original” form, digital curators have to have a clear idea of the features and characteristics that have to be preserved in order for the curated object to be understandable, accessible, and usable in the future. What these characteristics, referred to as significant properties, are depends largely on how and for which purposes the preserved objects will be used. In this presentation we will give an overview of the approach taken by the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences to the identification and definition of the significant properties of the digital assets curated and preserved by the archive. In doing so, we discuss challenges experienced and benefits expected – including an improved communication with the stakeholders involved in the curation and dissemination of the data held by the archive.

1. Open Repositories 2014
A rose is a rose is a rose?
Defining significant properties of social sciences research data
Stefan Müller Astrid Recker
GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences
Data Archive for the Social Sciences
Cologne, Germany
June 12, 2014
This work is licensed under a
CreativeCommons Attribution 4.0 International License
{stefan.mueller | astrid.recker}
@gesis.org

2. • runs a Data Archive which
provides data services for the
community
●
is a social science infrastructure
institution
●
supports social science
research in all phases of
the data life cycle

3. We curate.
We preserve.
We manage data.
For access and re-use.

4. A rose… …is a rose…
…is a rose?
Rose
Roses are red? Sometimes.

5. When does a rose stop being a rose?

6. 00111001011000
00111000111010
10010101011000
01011010100101
Dealing with performant assets
Source Process Performance

7. We would like to preserve the performance, baby!

8. A table is a table is a table?
Researchers in the
quantitative social sciences
have a passion for tables.
It‘s all about rows and columns.
But: Each cell combination has a
meaning.

9. Therefore researchers
need some materials for
interpretation purposes

10. Which one to choose?
Questionnaire Codebook
Licences
Methodological report
etc
BLABLA

11. Meet the
onion

12. The road from here…
“Highway to Hell” by Lyndi&Jason (cc-by-sa)
• Further discussion of definitions
within the archive
• Definition of significant properties
using the InSPECT framework
http://www.significantproperties.org.uk
• Discussion of identified properties with
involved stakeholders

13. References and further reading
Grace, Stephen, Garet Knight and Lynne Montague. 2009. InSPECT: Final Report.“
http://significantproperties.org.uk/inspect-finalreport.pdf
Heslop, H., Davis, S., & Wilson, A. (2002). An Approach to the Preservation of Digital Records.
Retrieved from http://www.naa.gov.au/Images/An-approach-Green-Paper_tcm16-47161.pdf
Renear, Allen H, Simone Sacchi, Karen M Wickett, and E Daniel Street. 2010. “Definitions of Dataset
in the Scientific and Technical Literature.” In ASIST 2010, October 22-27, 2010.
http://www.asis.org/asist2010/proceedings/proceedings/ASIST_AM10/submissions/240_Final_Su
bmission.pdf
Sacchi, Simone, Karen Wickett, Allen Renear, David Dubin, and E Daniel Street. 2011. “A Framework
for Applying the Concept of Significant Properties to Datasets.” In ASIST 2011, October 9-13,
2011. http://www.asis.org/asist2011/proceedings/submissions/148_FINAL_SUBMISSION.pdf
Schumann, Natascha, and Reiner Mauer. 2013. “The GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences: A
Widely Recognised Data Archive on Its Way.” International Journal of Digital Curation 8 (2)
(November 21): 215–222. doi:10.2218/ijdc.v8i2.285.
http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/285
All pictures used in this presentation are, if not denoted differently, CCO licenced and therefore
public domain.