vol252 4 IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2001 At the IASSIST/IFDO conference in Amsterdam in May of 2001 a session on “New Archives (Forum)” was chaired by Paul de Guchteneire (UNESCO) and Brigitte Hausstein (GESIS) with participants from new and emerging archives as well as some from the “old world” of existing data archives. The chairs of the session have succeeded in publishing the collection of papers. The reason for re-publishing the session in the IASSIST Quarterly is to spread the word about the archive movement in Eastern Europe to a broader audience of the full IASSIST membership and IQ readers. In this brief introduction I will take the opportunity to thank the chairpersons and editors Brigitte Hausstein and Paul de Guchteneire for their effort and also to thank the authors from several countries in the Eastern Europe. For a more detailed introduction to the papers you may refer to the introduction by the chairpersons. Karsten Boye Rasmussen - March 2002 Editor's Notes Introduction Editors: Brigitte Hausstein, GESIS Branch Office Berlin/ Central Archive Cologne and Paul de Guchteneire, UNESCO/MOST, Paris. The “New Archives Forum” at the 2001 IASSIST/IFDO Conference “A Data Odyssey – Collaborative working in the Social Science Cyberspace” The International Association for Social Science Informa- tion Services and Technology (IASSIST) held its 27th annual conference with the International Federation of Data Organizations (IFDO) from May 14 - 19, 2001. The conference was convened in Amsterdam and hosted by the NIWI (Nederlands Instituut voor Wetenschappelijke Informatiediensten - Netherlands Institute for Scientific Information Services) and the Scientific Statistical Agency of the Netherlands. During the last quarter of the 20th Century, IASSIST has held its annual international confer- ence in Europe about every four years. IASSIST did so again, this year in Amsterdam in collaboration with IFDO. About 200 data and archive specialists from the USA, Canada, Eastern and Western Europe as well as from Africa and Asia attended the conference. The conference was structured in three different domains of potential sharing of information, experience and expertise: First were organizational matters, like acquisition policy, access to data, and setting up new national or topical archives. Second was meta data: standards, tools, and new develop- ments. And third was content: various (new) data types like qualitative, aggregate data, multi-media or geo-data, or combining data from registries. The pre-conference workshops which are a tradition at IASSIST/IFDO confer- ences, introduced the participants to the a new standard for meta data documentation – the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI). The most often discussed issue at the conference centered also on the DDI and special attention has been devoted to the applications of the DDI and to the experiences in the data archives. IASSIST conferences also bring together colleagues from new data archives around the world. In Amsterdam a special session for these new archives was organized for the first time. The main focus of the session was on Data Archives in Eastern Europe but also representatives of new archives from Japan, Finland, Ireland and Greece joined the meeting. The session chaired by Paul de Guchteneire UNESCO/MOST (Management of Social Transformations Program), Paris and Brigitte Hausstein GESIS (German Social Science Infrastructure Services) Branch Office Berlin/Central Archive Cologne comprised two case studies from Slovenia and South Africa and a Forum of representa- tives of data archives from Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Russia and Romania. IASSIST Quarterly Summer 2001 5 Janez Stebe & Irena Vipavc (Social Science Data Archive at the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ljubliana - ADP) discussed how the new archives could take advan- tage of experiences of the already existing data archives in the world and Heston Phillips & Patience Tshose spoke about how the data service was managed and organized in the South African Data Archive (SADA) which has been existing since 1994. The Forum discussion introduced to a variety of topics in the design and implementation of new data archives in Eastern Europe. The Forum member reported about their experiences in, results and the difficul- ties of creating a data infrastructure in their countries. In short reports they gave an overview of the current situation. Jindrich Krejci (head of the Sociological Data Archive in Prague, Czech Republic) mentioned that the Czech archive had been established in 1998 within the framework of the project “Social Trends” funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. Now it is part of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences and since 2001 a member of CESSDA (Council of European Social Science Data Archives). Ildiko Nagy (Data Archive Department of TARKI, Budapest) introduced the Hungarian Social Research Informatics Center, the first data archive in Eastern Europe. Ludmila Khakhulina (deputy director of the research center VCIOM, Moscow) and Larisa Kosova (head of the information department of the VCIOM) presented their project “Creating a public data archive in Russia”. Nina Rostegaeva (head of the Data Bank of Sociological Researches - DBSR) reviewed the historical background of the data archive at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, that had been founded in 1986 and describes the future plans. The Estonian Social Science Data Archive in Tartu (ESSDA) was introduced by Andu Rämmer. The Archive was set up in 1994 and became a member of CESSDA in 1997. At the moment it is struggling very hard to keep alive because of the lack of permanent funding. Ausma Tabuna (head of the Latvian Social Science Data Archive, Riga) described the same situation in Latvia. The idea of establishing a data archive in Slovakia and Romania is relatively new, there- fore Katarina Strapcova, (Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia) and Adrian Dusa (Institute for Quality of Life Research, Bucharest) presented their first views on this issue and informed about their plans for the future. Ekkehard Mochmann (IFDO President, ZA Cologne) opened the discussion by noting that obviously all data archives - old and new ones - are facing the same problems. They have to cope with financial restrictions, insufficient technical equipment as well as with the lack of well-trained archive specialists. He emphasized that beside financial support these new archives needed also special training in data processing and documentation techniques. In this respect it would be necessary to provide a platform for new archives in Eastern Europe to exchange experiences in producing and storing metadata. He offered to set up a discussion group on New Data Archives on the IFDO homepage. Paul de Guchteneire appreciated the support for new archives in Eastern Europe provided by GESIS/Central Archive Cologne, the Finish and Swedish Data Archive. He expressed his hope that this kind of support (he called it “Twinning”) would be growing and he pointed out that the UNESCO/MOST would also promote both the establishment of further data archives in those countries where such facilities are weak and the establish- ment of a network of data archives from Eastern and Western Europe. In her closing speech Brigitte Hausstein underlined: ”The Forum has been the first opportunity in the last years for data archive specialists from Eastern Europe to meet and share experiences. On the one hand the Forum provided a comprehensive view of the progress achieved in the field of establishing data archives in Eastern Europe. On the other hand there is a common understanding of the fact that the new archives still need support provided by the international data and network organizations and experienced data archives. The GESIS Branch Office will continue to foster the cooperation between data archives from Eastern and Western Europe by offering workshops and training facilities”. Published at: http://www.gesis.org/en/data_service/ eastern_europe/news/NAF2001.pdf