i)^$sist NEWSLETTER vol.1, no. 1 I Amendments Article 7 Amendments to these statutes may be proposed by any member with the support of five signatures. All amendments will be submitted to the General Assembly for approval along with the election ballot. Amendments approved by a majority of the members voting will be incorporated into the Constitution. Termination The Association may be dissolved by a majority of the members. Remaining funds will be transferred to the International Social Science Council. Transitional Norm The ad hoc Steering Committee will serve until after the first meeting of the GenerTl Assembly, but in any case not later than December 31, 1978. The ad hoc committee will arrange for a regular election to be held as soon as possible be- fore that date. SECRETARIAT REPORTS Canadian Secretariat Report i Sharon Chappie Data Clearing House for the Social Sciences The Data Clearing House for the Social Sciences is the Canadian Secretariat for lASSIST. Activities of lASSIST are published in the Data Clearinghouse Bulletin . A large campaign for lASSIST membership was conducted by the Data Clearing- house. Over five hundred forms were sent out. To date, 53 individuals and in- stitutions have expressed an interest in affiliating with lASSIST; 9 others wish to be retained only on the mailing list. Supplementary membership campaigns are being considered. Interest in the established Action Groups is as follows: Data Archive Regis- try: 13; Data Archive Development: 13; Data Acquisition: 14; Data Documentation: 16; Classification: 8; Process-produced data: 16. Coordinators for each of the groups have been appointed. Initial meetings are planned for the coming months. sist NEWSLETTER vol.1, no. 1 Some of the respondents to the membership campaign letter recommended the creation of other Action Groups, such as the hardware/software technology Action Group (Data Organization and Management) and a cross-file indexing Action Group. Other suggestions included a group to interface between information data bases and potential users and a group to examine the relationship between bibliographic data bases, statistical data bases, and lASSIST. Initial response to the lASSIST mailing indicates that there is considerable enthusiasm for such an organization in Canada. It will be up to the Canadian mem- bers of lASSIST to decide whether their needs can best be served by merging with the US organization in a North American lASSIST movement or by working closely with the Americans in matters of conmon interest, but continuing to maintain a separate Secretariat and a separate voice at the international level. West European Secretariat Report Per Nielsen Danish Data Archives In Europe, the lASSIST membership campaign in September, 1975, resulted in an immediate re'ponse from more than 80 interested individuals — and names are contin- uously cominj in. In the Spring of 1976, a number of European social science data archives agreed to provide information dissemination facilities for lASSIST. Conse- quently, all individuals having indicated an interest in lASSIST will receive mailings according to the following geographical division, where bracketed numbers indicate the approximate "membership" size in May, 1976: Greece, Italy, and Spain: Archivio dati e programmi per le scienze sociali (ADPSS), Milan (7); Belgium, France, and French-speaking Switzerland: Belgian Archives for the Social Sciences (BASS), Louvain-la-Neuve (8); Denmark: Danish Data Archives (DDA), Copenhagen (7); Eire, Israel, and the United Kingdom: SSRC Survey Archive, Essex (21); Finland, Norway, and Sweden: Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD), Bergen (13); the Netherlands: Steinmetzarchief , Amsterdam (7); Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, and German-speaking Switzerland: Zentralarchiv (ZA), Cologne (14). Until recently, the ZA has also disseminated information to half a dozen potential members in Eastern Europe; these people (and, we hope a lot more to be brought in) will now be served by Dr. Ostrowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. Prior to the Edinburgh meetings an overall mailing was carried out, including information on the Action Groups in Europe. Within a few months, we hope that the Action Groups have defined the priority of tasks so that workshops and other sub- stantive activities accomplishing the objectives of lASSIST can be scheduled for 1977.