Search

The article attempts to describe the data archive, one example of growing movement in the social sciences. In 1958, the Institute for International Studies at the University of California in Berkeley, California, and the Survey Research Center (SRC) of the university began to collaborate in the development of a campus facility to serve the needs of local scholars in these regard. Sample survey data conducted by scholars and in some cases, commercial polling organizations were sought for the archive. The data came at the specific request of individual users, in the form of punched cards and the various documents associated with the conduct of the original studies. Proceeding through informal channels, the SRC began to acquire the basic data collected by various scholars in their own work. It then made those data available to other scholars in order that they might be analyzed further and in combination with other studies. The holdings of the library have grown and the problems of organizing and maintaining the archive have grown with them. In order to keep up with the increasingly complex demands of the users, the archive has shifted toward a reliance upon electronic computers for certain kinds of basic operations.