6   IASSIST Quarterly  2013

IASSIST Quarterly

Guest Editor’s Notes

The Evolution of a Special Issue of the IQ in Honor 
of Sue A. Dodd:   How remembering a pioneer data 
librarian became a tribute to the contributions of 
IASSIST over the decades 

In the months before the 2012 annual IASSIST meeting, 
Libbie Stephenson contacted me to toss around ideas 
for some type of memorial we might plan for the coming 
meeting to honor our friend and colleague, Sue A. Dodd.  
Sue had passed away in October 20101.   Libbie spoke of 
the important role Sue had played as a mentor in her data 
librarian career.  She talked about how with the passage 
of time, newer members of our professional community 
might not know about the early days of IASSIST nor of the 
important contributions made then by Sue and others.  I 
agreed and we decided to meet during the conference 
to discuss all of this further, allowing time for our ideas to 
percolate.   When we met, quite informally, our discussion 
included others from Sue’s cohort: Tom Brown, Carolyn 
Geda, and Judith Rowe among them.  

We agreed on the value of gathering original essays that 
would consider Dodd’s contributions as a conceptual 
starting point, especially regarding data description 
broadly conceived.  We decided that in moving 
beyond this, the essays should address the history 
and development of related topics of special interest, 
reflecting the expertise of the authors.   Subsequently 
we discussed our ideas with the IQ editor, Karsten Boye 
Rasmussen, who was fully supportive.  I volunteered to 
guest edit the collection and Libbie stated her interest in 
preparing a bibliographic essay on Sue’s publications.  In 
subsequent months we contacted colleagues whom we 
thought might be interested in participating in the project 
and were pleased at the responses.  As can be seen by a 
quick scan of the Table of Contents, they were so positive 
that our initial goal for “an IQ issue” grew to constitute the 
whole of IQ Volume 37 (2013)2. 

Among the numerous themes that run through these 
essays, the collegiality within IASSIST is ever present.   
Perhaps the most interesting trait the essays have in 
common is the unique way each alludes to Dodd’s 
contributions.  In explaining our concept of the project 
to potential authors, we did not expect that they would 
explicitly tie their work to hers, yet each essay does so in 
one way or another.  Among the authors who knew Sue, 
some of the commentary reflects the personal as well 
as the professional.  Two of the authors, Ann Gray and 
Jonathan Crabtree, share experiences of working at the 
Institute for Research in Social Science at the University 
of North Carolina, Sue’s professional home for more than 
30 years.  Peter Burnhill charms with memories of his first 
encounters with Sue while giving us a glimpse of the early 
days of the Edinburgh University Data Library and then 

EDINA, and his almost 30 years-later encounter with her 
writing as he embarked on new ventures related to digital 
preservation of what he terms “scholarly statement.”    

Several  authors note both implicitly and explicitly the 
manner in which ideas in the 1960s – 1980s were both 
prescient in terms of challenges still vexing the social 
science data community and foundational in terms of 
setting the course that has influenced the collaborative 
efforts of the international data community ever since.   
One of the more exciting results of the project is that it 
offered a venue for an exclusive: a thorough telling of the 
history of the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI).  The 
comprehensive story of the DDI emerges for the first time 
in the essays contributed by Karsten Boye Rasmussen, 
Ann Green and Chuck Humphrey, and Mary Vardigan, and 
through the detailed and richly documented timeline of 
the DDI prepared by Mary Vardigan.  Taking us from the 
early study description work at some of the European 
data archives and the contemporaneous documentation 
standards efforts in North America, their essays give us 
an overarching perspective on the context, motivation 
and requirements behind the design and development 
of metadata standards, the DDI, and the infrastructural 
and technological changes that contributed to the 
contemporary maturation of the DDI.

In addition to a glimpse of the legacy of Dodd at the 
University of North Carolina, Jon Crabtree’s essay explores 
some of the more contemporary collaborative ventures of 
the wider data community, especially the Data-PASS (Data 
Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences) project.  In 
the following essay Micah Altman and Mercè Crosas take 
us fully into the present and look to the future, discussing 
a range of work related to data citation in the context of 
contemporary frameworks for data management and 
research.   Hailey Mooney brings the essays full circle with 
her discussion of IASSIST’s Special Interest Group on Data 
Citation and its development of the Quick Guide to Data 
Citation.   Sue Dodd would be very pleased to see this guide, 
we think, as it seems to be exactly the kind of product that 
she expected of future generations of data professionals, as 
expressed in the quote by which Libbie Stephenson closes 
the introduction of her comprehensive bibliographic essay.  

Editing this volume of the IQ was a stimulating and 
enjoyable experience; working with each of the authors 
introduced me to new facets of our shared experiences 
and interests in unexpected ways.  My thanks to each 
of the authors for their enthusiasm, commitment, and 



IASSIST Quarterly  2013   7

IASSIST Quarterly

patience.   Individually and as a group they personify what 
IASSIST has stood for all these years: collegial collaboration 
of social science data professionals across the world.  That’s 
what made this endeavor so interesting:  I discovered that 
in honoring the memory of one of our early members, 
we actually pay tribute to the many contributions of all 
of IASSIST.  And as a bonus, the essays make for a good 
documentary read.  Thank you, all.  

Margaret O’Neill Adams (Peggy Adams)
April 2014
Guest Editor
peggyoadams@yahoo.com

Notes
1.  Sue Anna Dodd, b. 6/18/1937 in Lexington, KY;  d. 
10/6/2010 in Pittsboro, NC.

2. There is an additional area of Sue Dodd’s professional 
contributions that is not covered in these essays because 
the work involved was outside their topical scope of 
consideration.   However, in keeping with one of the 
goals for this project -- to inform readers of Sue Dodd’s 
contributions -- we add this note.   

Building upon the work that her publications represent and 
her outreach to the professional library community, Dodd 
was among those who also contributed to the professional 
community of traditional archivists.  She participated in 
training workshops for them, focusing especially on the 
description and documentation of archival machine-
readable records.  Most importantly and indicative of 
her civic commitment, she completed a multi-month 
consultancy during 1986-87, at the [U.S.] National Archives 
and Records Administration.  She produced a substantial 
but unpublished report that covered her study of computer 
records and the Federal records management program, 
and case studies of the computer records in two Federal 
agencies: the Bureau of the Census and the Department 
of State.  In the report she identified challenges, prioritized 
problems, and presented a set of recommendations, with 
cost estimates, to improve the management of computer 
records by the National Archives.  (Dodd, S.A. “Computer 
Records and the National Archives: An Assessment With 
New Directions,” 1986-1987)