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.