Archivist on Board: Contributions to the Research Team

Abstract

In this article, we demonstrate the advantages of including an archivist as a member of the research team based on our experience with two multi-site, multi-method, primarily qualitative projects. The Principal Investigator, committed to the principles of data sharing and preservation, recruited a data archivist at the inception of the projects. Several issues arose that are not typically encountered in a research project: investigators needed to agree to the principles of data preservation and sharingconcepts that are not typically discussed a prior; the research ethics application and approval had to incorporate the conditions of preservation and sharing; and we needed a comprehensive plan for preservation that would ensure the creation of high-quality data products worthy of deposition. This comprehensive plan required that we identify the standards of archiving, incorporating within the data management plan an appropriate inventory list and a design for tagged fields and a corresponding Document Type Definition (DTD) used in the mark-up of textual data. A plan for creating access to the data for secondary analysis was also developed. The conditions of use, cataloguing records, and citation guide are all part of preparing the data for access. Finally, the challenges of this approach are summarized. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs000356