Strategies of data archiving for cultural anthropology

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The qualitative social science community has been engaged in debate about how data can and should be shared for at least the past two decades. The recent NSF requirement for data management plans has reignited these discussions and caused scholars to rethink strategies for preserving and sharing primary data, rather than disseminating findings through publication of synthesized results alone. Additionally, the discipline of anthropology has reached a life cycle stage when many anthropologists may consider archiving their data from studies begun forty or more years ago. Data from these longitudinal studies form a valuable resource for the discipline both as historical documents and as primary data that can serve as a basis for understanding of change over time. Creating systems of archiving that preserve data and facilitate sharing among scholars, while simultaneously protecting confidentiality and study participants, has become an urgent need for establishing a truly 21st century anthropological discipline.In this project, Dr. Lisa Cliggett (University of Kentucky) addresses this need by developing a digital archive that will serve as a prototype for building a system of data archiving, metadata documentation, and data sharing designed specifically for cultural anthropology. Cliggett will use her own longitudinal data from the Gwembe Tonga Research Project (GTRP) to create the prototype, which will immediately facilitate the useful archiving of more than sixty years of GTRP data collected by Elizabeth Colson, Thayer Scudder, and associated researchers, while also benefiting future GTRP research. Cliggett's archiving system will be designed to be adapted by others in the qualitative social sciences and humanities communities for their own projects. Outcomes of the project include: 1) A prototype digital repository for the GTRP data archive, which other scholars can adapt for their own needs; 2) A Work Flow guide for qualitative data archiving 3) A project web site to disseminate details about the archiving process and other related information; 4) An American Anthropological Association meeting session about qualitative data archiving.